Innovative Curriculum: Evidence Based Practice For Nursing Professionals

Abstract

Evidence based medicine and practice needs to have a robust and reliable curriculum. This curriculum has been designed keeping in mind the latest technology and teaching strategies. There has been a major shift in context to the patient physician relations, care and utilisation of best available evidence in making informed decisions about the various treatment options and approaches to patient care. Nurses form an integral component of the healthcare delivery system and of the health system itself. There has been substantial research in the nursing principles and indexed nursing journals are publishing articles pertaining to the various disciplines and components of nurse practitioners and related patient care services. Methodology: It is a cross sectional study and total of 50 registered nurses were recruited from a public hospital to engage in the evaluation for statistically meaningful and valid results or interpretations. A self-administered questionnaire was distributed among 62 registered nurses; 12 registered nurses did not fill the questionnaire therefore 50 registered nurses were recruited. Result: Pie chart shows the major differences in frequency of all themes, the junior registered nurses have more knowledge about EBM as compared to their seniors 70% and 10% respectively but when asked about doing post-graduation the seniors showed more interest as compared to junior nurses 67% and 2% respectively. The junior nurses showed more counselling ability and also practiced EBM. Overall there was significant decline in senior nurses’ performance when compared with junior nurses p-value is 0.001 Conclusion: Evidence based medicine is based on three components; utilising prior knowledge based on clinical experience, searching systematically evidence and acknowledging patient’s preferences. Junior registered nurses understand evidence based medicine and are eager to apply EBM in their career whereas senior nurses where more interested in obtaining higher degree and were less interested in patient care