Implementation Of Evidence-Based Practice In A Development Project On Nurse Students' Clinical Education

SynopsisThe evidence-based practice (EBP) movement started at the beginning of the 1970s in the field of medicine. The famous definition by Sackett et al. (1997, p. 2) defined evidence-based medicine as 'the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.' The idea of EBP was later introduced to other fields of professional practice in health and social care, as well as to the education of health professionals such as nursing education. The project named Knowledge in development (KID) focused on the development of clinical preceptorship in the context of nursing. Clinical preceptors are registered nurses and practical nurses who have the responsibilities of caring for patients and teaching nursing students at the same time. Nursing teachers working in the KID project were enthusiastic to implement the evidence-based practice approach in the project work, by using different evidence bases.PurposeThe purpose of this article is to present how evidence-based practices in the project work were implemented and to describe the experiences of the project group members about the implementation of EBP.Project settingTwo universities of applied sciences, two vocational institutes, and four health-care organizations in Western Finland.Year of the project2009-2013Target readersPrimarily project practitioners, project managers and teachers on the healthcare sector, and secondarily other interested parties.Lessons learnedBased on the experiences gained in this project, the use of an evidence-based practice approach in planning and implementing a development project in healthcare clinical and educational settings is recommended.Competencies highlightedInformation literacyRelated theoryThe structure of different evidence bases presented by Rycroft-Malone et al. (2004), including research, clinical experience, patients, clients and carers, and local context and environment.