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"EBP is a problem-solving approach to clinical decision-making within a health care organization. It integrates the best available scientific evidence with the best available experiential (patient and practitioner) evidence. EBP considers internal and external influences on practice and encourages critical thinking in the judicious application of such evidence to the care of individual patients, a patient population, or a system." (p.4)
Dearholt, S. L., & Dang, D. (2012). Johns Hopkins nursing evidence-based practice : models and guidelines (2nd ed.) Indianapolis, IN: Sigma Theta Tau International.
Johns Hopkins Nursing Evidence-Based Practice Model and Tools
All tools reprinted with the permission of Johns Hopkins University ©The Johns Hopkins Hospital/The Johns Hopkins University.
©The Johns Hopkins Hospital/The Johns Hopkins University.
This evidence-based resource is intended to be used as a point-of-care tool to find answers quickly.
UpToDate is an evidence-based, physician-authored resource that provides clinical decision support by delivering the most recent medical information and evidence-based recommendations from physician authors, editors, and peer reviewers.
Includes access to UpToDate Pathways, an interactive guide to making clinical decisions, Lab Interpretations, useful for understanding abnormal lab results and Emmi, which includes patient education videos that are also useful for nursing instruction.
"A systematic review summarizes the results of available carefully designed healthcare studies (controlled trials) and provides a high level of evidence on the effectiveness of healthcare interventions. Judgments may be made about the evidence and inform recommendations for healthcare." -- Cochrane Consumer Network
CINAHL, the Cumulative Index to Nursing & Allied Health Literature, provides indexing and abstracting for current nursing and allied health journals and other publications dating back to 1982, and contains additional records dating back to 1937. CINAHL also provides access to full-text for more than 760 journals and offers complete coverage of English-language nursing journals and publications from the National League for Nursing and the American Nurses' Association.
Collection of databases containing independent evidence to inform healthcare decision making. Includes full-text PDF versions of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews for both complete reviews and protocols.
Also include Cochrane Clinical Answers.
Practical evidence for healthcare decision making. May be used to devise evidence-based care plans and interventions.
National of Library of Medicine database that provides patients, their family members, health care professionals, researchers, and the public with easy access to information on publicly and privately supported clinical studies on a wide range of diseases and conditions.
The first step in research or evidence-based practice is defining a problem and asking a question. In the research process, this becomes part of developing a proposal for a study. In the clinical setting, ‘asking a question’ may become part of a research study, a quality improvement project, or lead to evidence-based practice.
A commonly used format for creating a clinical question is known as PICO which refers to:
P — Patient population of interest
I — Intervention/issue of interest
C — Comparison of interest
O — Outcome of interest
-- ANA: American Nurses Association | Research Toolkit | "Asking the Question"
While searching for evidence-based research, each article must be evaluated to determine whether or not it is relevant to your research question. Answering the PICO or PICOTT questions while reading the article can help you to use the information effectively.
To evaluate whether an article is relevant to your research, use PICO/TT:
P - PATIENT OR PROBLEM -- How would you describe a group of patients similar to yours? What are the most important characteristics of the patient?
I - INTERVENTION, EXPOSURE, PROGNOSTIC FACTOR -- What main intervention are you considering? What do you want to do with this patient?
C - COMPARISON -- What is the main alternative being considered?
O - OUTCOME -- What are you trying to accomplish, measure, improve, or affect?
To further determine relevance, add:
T - Type of Question -- Therapy / Diagnosis / Harm / Prognosis / Prevention
T - Type of Study -- Is this a Systematic review / Randomized Controlled Trial / Cohort Study / Case Control Study?
Hint: Most PICO/PICOTT information can be found in the abstract.
