Understanding Research in Nursing School

Nursing research is a powerful tool and plays a crucial role in improving everyday nursing practice. Carrying out and understanding research and asking questions about current practice can help us learn and update our knowledge to give better care.

What is evidence-based practice?

Evidence-based practice can be defined as the integration of the best research evidence with clinical expertise and the patient’s unique values and circumstances. Advances in healthcare have contributed to an increased life expectancy and improved disease management for many. For you as a nursing student, there is the constant challenge to keep abreast of these advances and provide more formal, precise and accurate information, facilitating individualised patient need.

Components of evidence-based practice

The authors of Evidence-Based Medicine: How to Practice and Teach EBM (4th ed., 2011), details three components to evidence-based practice. Learn a bit about them from the bulleted information below:

• Knowledge from clinical expertise/practice experience— encompasses the nurse’s knowledge, skills and proficiency in their specified area of practice.
  • Includes building positive relationships with patients through communication skills and emotional intelligence
  • Use clinical guidelines created by government and professional organizations to lead you in supporting patient care
• Knowledge from patient experience—preferences and values— where recognition is made that patients are all individual.
  • Get to know your patient by being attentive and observant
  • Establish rapport by making eye contact, actively listening and demonstrating empathy
  • Involve others by identifying significant people in patient’s life and what support they might have in their personal life
• Knowledge from best available evidence — refers to the most current, relevant and reliable research
  • Research process critical to developing best available evidence
  • Developing a research question requires identifying a gap in nursing knowledge
  • Literature reviews provide an overview of the existing information on the research question topic and from there, research design and methodologies are identified
  • To achieve confidence in evidence-based practice, nurses must verify that the information is valid, reliable and applicable, which can be done through critical appraisal and hierarchy of evidence.

Read more about all three components of evidence-based practice are essential for delivering positive patient outcomes in Successful Studying for Nursing Students which can be found on ClinicalKey Student for Nursing.