Question

How does a nurse know what (if any) knowledge in a research study is usable for clinical practice? What would a critical thinker look for in the evidence before deciding to change? What influence do credibility and clinical significance have on your decisions to integrate research-based evidence into your practice? Supported by scholarly sources.

Answer 1

Nurses know that knowledge in a research study is usable for clinical practice. They know this from the wide variety of experiences they gain as a nursing student and as an experienced professional. Of these, the experience they gain as a junior level to a senior level nursing professional is of immense value and a contributing factor to their understanding that research study is usable for clinical practice. This experience leads them to believe in research outcomes and encourages them to use it in clinical practice thereby becoming the advocates of evidence-based practice.

Critical thinking is vital to evidence-based nursing care and practice. EBP supports nursing practice and contributes positively and effectively to patient outcomes across different settings and locations. A critical thinker would look for credibility, the number of positive outcomes, effectiveness or clinical significance, in the evidence before deciding to change.

The decision to integrate research-based evidence into the practice is influenced by credibility and clinical significance. Credibility in this context refers to the trustworthiness or believability of the research-based evidence. Any research-based evidence is evaluated for its credibility before integrating it into clinical practice and only the credible ones are integrated with clinical practice. Clinical significance is the practical relevance of a treatment effect. It is the impact of study results on clinical practice, which is proportional to the number of positive patient outcomes. Clinical significance of research-based evidence is also evaluated before integrating it into clinical practice. Only the research-based evidence with a higher number of positive patient outcomes will be integrated into clinical practice.

Citation:

Critical thinking and evidence-based practice (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S8755722305001432)