Evidence-Based Practice

Nursing as a profession has always recognized the importance of research as an essential basis for its development. The identification of the knowledge base for nursing practice contributes to achieving client outcomes and making nursing practice credible (McPheeters & Lohr, 1999). During the past decade, nursing has witnessed increasing emphasis on the integration of research and clinical care with the evolution of evidence-based practice and best practices. Taylor-Piliae (1998) describes evidence-based practice as the application of the best available empirical evidence that applies recent research findings to clinical practice in order to assist the provider’s clinical decision-making. “Evidence-based practices are proven ways to diagnose and treat patients based on rigorous scientific evidence and clinical effectiveness studies” (Ling, 2000, p. 81).
Although the terms best practices and evidence based practice are often used interchangeably, these terms have different meanings. Evidence-based practice can be a best practice, but a best practice is not necessarily evidence-based; best practices are simply ideas/strategies that work, such as programs, services, or interventions that produce positive client outcomes or reduce costs (Ling, 2000). Nurses need to base their
clinical practice on empirical evidence to optimize client outcomes, to provide cost-effective safe practice and to enhance the credibility of nursing care. Taylor-Piliae (1998) recognizes that a gap still exists between research findings and their implementation in
practice. Nurses continue to have difficulty synthesizing empirical and contextual evidence and integrating evidence-based changes into practice (Rosswurm & Larrabee, 1999).
Although nurses are well placed to contribute towards more clinically effective and cost-effective client care, nurses need skills and resources to appraise, synthesize, and implement the best evidence into practice. Gross (2000) contends that efforts to promote the implementation of evidence-based practice should focus on designing organizational systems that will facilitate change as opposed to those trying to change the behavior of the health care provider.