Nursing and Evidence-Based Practices - A Perfect Fit for New Knowledge

Future Goals & Scholarship

My journey in the RN-BSN program has provided me with the knowledge I needed to advance my career in nursing. Also, the RN-BSN has prepared me intellectually as well as in a foundational way to offer a higher quality of service to my patients. A nurse that truly engages with her profession never stops learning about the newest advances in healthcare strategies and policies, and I have been an enthusiastic learner when it comes to advancing my skills and my experiences for the benefit of my patients.

What I learned and how that Knowledge Helps Me

The advanced skills I have learned allow me to better care for my patients. But moreover, the RN-BSN program brought into my focus the importance of better English comprehension skills, including the ability to critically evaluate ideas, scholarly articles, speeches given by healthcare professionals, and other materials that nurses need to be familiar with. I also was pleased to have a chance to learn skills involved in public speaking. I'm not a shy person but I have not had much experience in public speaking and I was glad to have that chance to learn.

Communication was also a course that I enjoyed and gained a lot from. In a nurse's daily job responsibilities the importance of accurate communication cannot be overstated. Making sure that patients understand what is being done and what is being proposed for their well-being is vitally important. Also, I learned that when it comes to the communication between nurses and doctors, between nurses and other nurses, and between nurses and aides / orderlies it is very important that there is clarity and candor. That course was helpful to me in meaningful ways.

Of course there were classes in science-based and math-based subjects, and I gained important knowledge and perspectives from those classes.

My interest in the humanities had not been very intense prior to my experiences in the RN-BNS program, but I became a more-well-rounded person by taking classes in history and psychology. The psychological aspects of caring for patients are very important and fascinating to me; not just the psychology used when it comes to calming an upset patient. But in addition, the overall emotional dynamics on a hospital ward with a wide variety of patients that have a myriad of health problems -- that situation calls for calm, for perspective, for understanding and for the mental makeup that can help a nurse get through the day unscathed emotionally, so to speak. That's what I have learned.

Knowledge Gained of Evidence-based Practice

In order for nurses to provide the greatest level of care possible, learning to embrace evidence-based practices (EBP) is a big step in the right direction, and I learned how to take that step. Using ongoing educational opportunities, studying theories and how theories are developed, and dipping into science-based fields of new research -- all of those activities have led me to more fully understand the value of EBP. The idea that nurses will lead interprofessional teams to work towards finding better systems with which to deliver services and care is exciting to me.

Any formula for improving better healthcare outcomes is worth learning about, and in my RN-BNS experience I gained the knowledge needed to have a grasp of what EBP really stands for. In the peer-reviewed Online Journal of Issues in Nursing the author recalls that there was "an alarming report that major deficits in healthcare caused significant preventable harm," it was clear that something needed to be done. And when the first Quality Chasm report came out in 2001, it was a wake-up call to healthcare leadership that evidence-based practices were needed.

In short, it has now become clear to me what evidence-based practices really mean; according to the author, Kathleen Stevens, the foundation for EBP is simply the definition of quality healthcare: "[The] degree to which health services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge" (Stevens, 2013). I learned that EBP basically encourages a nurse to approach problem-solving -- through the use of professional standards of inquiry -- in a research-to-practice strategy. That is, the nurse's team -- or the nurse by herself -- uses not just traditional remedies and practices, but rather she (or he) uses what previous procedures have proven to be workable; that's evidence-based practice in a nutshell.

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