preview

What Are The Barriers To The Use Of Evidence Based Practice

Decent Essays

Evidence-based practice is the practice of making clinical decisions based off the best available research evidence coupled with the nurse’s own expertise, while also taking into account, the patient’s assessments and own personal preferences. This use of research has proven effective at providing better outcomes and lower healthcare costs, yet there are several barriers, such as time, education, and support, which prevent nurses from consistently using evidence-based practice (AJN, 2012). The top three barriers to the use of evidence-based practice are lack of time, education, and support in implementing new practices and using them consistently. One of the main barriers in using evidence-based practice is the lack of time in order to implement it into the nurse’s days. In one study, many respondents said that, both at work and outside of work hours, time was just not there (Brown, Wickline, Ecoff, & Glaser, 2009). In another study done many years later, time continued to be a main concern for nurses and that they just didn’t feel like it should be expected for them to keep up with the research (Tacia, Biskupski, Pheley, & Lehto, 2015). Many of these restraints on time can easily be addressed though. Some issues, such as, short staffing can be fixed, while others would take more work to address, such as, not having enough time at home to research due to familial obligations. Setting aside specific time in the workday for nurse’s to research or hiring more nurses in order to split the work load and allow more time in between tasks for research could also be solutions to this specific barrier. Another important barrier is nursing education. Nurses who graduated many years ago were not taught evidence-based practice and even current schools focus too much researching rather than how to implement current research into care (AJN, 2012). This lack of knowledge on how to implement may stem from the lack of knowledge on how to read and interpret research data or that nurses might feel overwhelmed due to the fact that there is so much and might not know how to narrow what is important or how to read all of it (Brown et al., 2009). In the Tacia study (2015), advanced care nurses could easily point out

Get Access