QUESTION- Discuss the sources of evidence for public health nurses. How can this evidence be applied to support evidence-based practice? Cite at least two sources of evidence in your response.

QUESTION- Discuss the sources of evidence for public health nurses. How can this evidence be applied to support evidence-based practice? Cite at least two sources of evidence in your response.

The source of evidence that one uses to gain knowledge regarding a specific area within nursing is as important as the data itself. There are many channels through which public health nurses can gather knowledge from, however, not all information is considered to have the same level of strength of evidence. Given that the nursing field had expanded, so too has the number of journals, articles and textbooks that provide a vast amount of information. According to Weum, Bragstad and Glavin, (2017), there are four major sources from which public health nurses go to for knowledge: national plans and guidelines, knowledge that they gained through personal experience, knowledge gained through training, and guidelines set in place by local authorities. In the United States, individuals within the health care field also use one of the country’s leading source of public health information that is also meant to guide the country towards a better healthy future, Healthy People 2030. Healthy people 2030 is the framework set in place for the betterment of the communities within the country by utilizing health literacy. (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2021). All examples listed are valuable for the public health nurse because they all provide some form of knowledge that is considered by other professionals within the field to be successful. Take the corona virus as an example, it was a new disease process that had to be learned and no one had much knowledge of it in terms of treatments plans. After caring for several individuals with Covid-19, they began to learn what sort of things were successful and what wasn’t. This same concept can be applied to public health nurses in the field. They come across situations from which they learn from and use the knowledge that they have gained through experience and pair it with knowledge from literary sources to provide interventions that benefit the individual being cared for.  Therefore, while personal experience might not have the same evidence strength as studies might, it does provide some form of knowledge that individuals go for when performing interventions.

References

Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. (2021). Healthy People 2030. Retrieved from https://health.gov/our-work/national-health-initiatives/healthy-people/healthy-people-2030

Weum, M.,  Bragstad, L., Glavin, K. (2017). How Public Health Nurses Use Sources of Knowledge. Retrieved from https://sykepleien.no/en/forskning/2018/02/how-public-health-nurses-use-sources-knowledge