Nursing is no longer just about providing care at the bedside. The nurse is challenged to provide the best patient care possible. This elevated level of care can be achieved by implementing the use of evidence-based practice (EBP). EBP can be defined as the use of recent research, combined with nursing experience, and patient standards (LoBiondo-Wood & Haber, 2014). In this paper, I will discuss a change in policy my hospital recently implemented, why the practice change was instituted, the research process for decision making, along with the steps used to implement the new policy. I will also discuss the role of research in practice change.
Pressure Injury Best Practice
Our hospital system has grown …show more content…
The Chief Nursing Officers from each hospital designated the resources for staff to meet monthly for the sole purpose of conducting research, evaluating this research, along with the goal to produce new policies which would be used system wide. Each hospital was asked to include two representatives, with one of these persons to attend the monthly meeting. Each hospital chose a criterion to research and present. My hospital elected to research prevention of pressure injury using evidence from the European Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel and National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel, which happens to be the go to standard for pressure injury prevention. As each hospital presented their segment of the new policy, all members reviewed the policy wording for accuracy and to assure that the proper evidence was used. Once the policies were completed, all WCC members reviewed the completed policy for any grammatical, spelling, or content errors. When everyone was comfortable with the outcome, the polices were written in the official format designed by the health system. These policies were presented to the legal department to assure no law was broken and that the hospital was not put in legal jeopardy by any improper wording. The final polices were then presented to the health system Chief Executive Officer (CEO) for signature. When the policies were received back from the CEO, they were considered binding and loaded to the online policy