EBP

Back when I went to nursing school, Evidence Based Practice was just a buzz word.  It was used by the students and faculty at the university nursing schools, I went to an associates program originally.  We heard about it, but it didn’t mean a lot to us.
When I entered my BSN program, I had a class all about Evidence Based Practice, but even then it was still something new used by the MSN and PhD students.

I had never thought a lot about it until recently.  Sure I would read articles and do literature searches to find the most current practice, but I didn’t think of it as EBP.  What happened recently was my unit was starting a new process for rounding that was part of a study being done in the hospital to reduce falls and hospital acquired pressure ulcers.

I received a lot of grief from my staff about the process and especially about the script that was presented to them.  They argued and stated that it would never work.  In a way, I agreed with them, but I had to put on the face of the boss and tell them that it will be done.  I then did a literature search about the ideas and found a couple of studies for the process and none discrediting the idea.

I then presented the studies to the staff and told them “if you want to do evidence based practice then here is the evidence proving the process.  If you can find something to the contrary, bring it to me and we can review them together.”

Not much was said to that.  They still grumbled under their breath and at the nurse’s station, but the implementation was a success.

I guess this intellectual stuff really works.