EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE

BENCY GNANASIGHAMANI

AMERICAN SENTINEL UNIVERSITY

Introduction

Medical and health care is one of the most dynamic human disciplines, and large amounts of money are spent annually on high-quality and sophisticated research, resulting in an exponential growth in health care literature. Regularly, new and more effective medicines, medical devices, and procedures are invented. One major objective behind all these efforts is to help doctors, nurses, and medical technicians provide the best possible care and treatment to patients. In addition to using traditional and well-established procedures and practices, health care practitioners are adopting innovative interventions that are based on best practices as well as solid research-based evidence. Evidence-based practice is one such technique and is quickly gaining popularity due to its potential to effectively handle clinical issues and provide better patient care (ANA 2003).

Implementation of Evidence Based Practice places additional demands on nurses to apply credible evidence to individual client situations through searching related evidence, using clinical judgments, and considering client values and system resources. To effectively apply the Evidence Based Practice process, in addition to the basic skills required to undertake nursing work, a nurse must have the ability to: identify knowledge gaps, formulate relevant questions, conduct an efficient literature search, apply rules of evidence to determine the validity of studies, apply the literature findings appropriately to the patient's problem, and appropriately involve the patient in the clinical decision making. Evidence Based Practice involves reconciling client values with evidence and clinical judgment, which may be particularly difficult for them due to their limited