-How has evidence-based practice evolved? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this evolution for public health nurses as well as communities?

-How has evidence-based practice evolved? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this evolution for public health nurses as well as communities?

Evidence-based practice in nursing plays a vital role in enhancing the quality of health and care for the general wellbeing of the people. Reliability on evidence in nursing reduces mistakes in decision making for safety and quality healthcare practices. The use and nature of evidence-based practice have evolved over the years, indicating a vast difference and improvement. In your response, you have described the importance of evidence-based practices in nursing and the initiatives that have led to the advancement of evidence-based practice, such as practice adoption, nursing education, curriculum realignment, and scientific engagement. You could also have indicated how the use of evidence-based practise has evolved from the conception of the nursing profession to the current nursing. McMenamin et al. (2019) trace the history of evidence-based practice to Florence Nightingale’s time, who documented the interventions against the mortality rates associated with the diseases or chronic conditions to determine the effectiveness of the interventions. Nightingale’s model used observation as the primary source of evidence and not scientific researches. You can also note that the EBP evolved on introduction and formalization of nursing education, with theorists defining nursing as a collaborative and interpersonal process.

EBP in nursing was later transformed to focus on patient outcomes, primarily safety, quality and effectiveness. The healthcare systems gained a significant influence to adopt the best practices and policies for a sustainable practice called institutionalization. The founding of Cochrane Collaboration considered randomized controlled trials as a gold-standard source of highly objective evidence with minimum bias (McMenamin et al., 2019). The advantage of the evolution is that it improved the level and quality of care to the communities. You can also add that the educational evolution on the use of EBP improved the nurses’ abilities to advance in their role as researchers in nursing instead of leaving the responsibility to nurses who specialized in research. Every nurse can translate the data around them for an effective response to health issues. According to Falkenberg-Olson (2019), current nurses can carry out nursing practice research to advance the quality of care compared to earlier when nurses relied on a few.  Advanced nursing education provides a better opportunity to improve on the use of EBP in nursing.

References

Falkenberg-Olson, A. C. (2019). Research translation and the evolving PhD and DNP practice roles: A collaborative call for nurse practitioners. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 31(8), 447–453. https://doi.org/10.1097/jxx.0000000000000266

McMenamin, A., Sun, C., Prufeta, P., & Raso, R. (2019). The evolution of the evidence-based practice. Nursing Management, 50(9), 14–19.