Reply to both discussions
1. Hello everyone, my name is Tyler. I served in the United States Air Force after high school. I then bounced around a few dead-end jobs before finding my calling in nursing. I worked as a CNA in long term care for a few years before getting in to my nursing program. After graduation I worked as a nurse manager at long term care facility for approximately 1 year. I left this position to return to school and earn my DNP in Adult-Geri Primary care. I am also working as a client care coordinator for a home health organization where I do initial assessments and develop care plans for our clients.
“Evidence Based Practice (EBP) is the conscientious integration of the best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values (Gray & Grove, 2021).” My experience with EBP research consists of my associates and bachelor’s programs doing research on possible changes for improved best practices. As a student working with EBP I understood that it was important but did not see how I could make changes based on EBP.
I also did research as a nurse manager in developing policy for the care home I worked at. I worked with my DON in creating a checklist and assessment tool for MASD prevention based on current research and evidence. These tools were focused on quality improvement which Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) (n.d.) identifies as a framework used to systematically improve care. My work with my DON not only solidified my knowledge of EBP and its importance, but also taught me that every person can have a significant impact on healthcare.
Although my DON and I worked closely together to develop and implement our MASD program at our care home, the organization had a hard time with the change. Tsaousides (2020) notes many reasons that change can be hard, but the main points are that the status quo is comfortable and there are unclear benefits to the change. These are the two reasons that the parent organization of the care home I worked at did not want to implement the new MASD program across all facilities. My DON and I argued the potential positive impact to the MASD program, but management decided that it would be best to limit the change to a single facility until the program showed significant positive impact. Unfortunately, I left the organization before seeing my MASD program implemented across the organization. Therefore, I would say that this organization was somewhat open to EBP changes but unwilling to leap headfirst into changes.
2. Good evening everyone. My name is Jeanette. I have been a nurse for almost eight years now and have enjoyed it thus far. I began my career as a nurse working on the Medical Surgical floor for a few years. It was a great experience as it really helped me put together and apply all the things that I learned while in nursing school. After working there for a few years. I realized I wanted to work more with the community and began home health nursing. This was another learning experience as I care for patients in their homes. After a year of home health, I began working as a school nurse and am doing so currently. There is always an adventure to be had at the school. After working in different areas of nursing, I have always found that I want to do more. Therefore, I am pursuing a DNP in Family Nurse Practitioner, which requires quite a bit of nursing research from my understanding and I am excited to learn how to apply evidence-based practice (EBP) when helping patients.
Nursing research and evidence-based practice experience that has been possessed was through my bachelor’s program and masters program. It has been shown that “evidence-based practice and decision-making have been consistently linked to improved quality of care, patient safety, and many positive clinical outcomes” (Connor et al., 2023). One of the most fun EBP projects I completed was in my bachelors program where it focused on decreasing falls in the elderly population. The intervention that was researched was dancing. Dancing showed that there was an improvement in balance and gait. It was interesting to learn that such a fun intervention yielded positive results and improved the safety of patients.
Another EBP experience I had was completing that looked at EBP interventions to improve the outcomes of individuals with diabetes type 2. The interventions researched were counseling, education, and the use of technology. The interventions showed improvement in treatment adherence and improved HbA1c. Through the process I learned how to critically analyze articles, which included paragraphs on how my research was conducted in databases and summarizing articles.
I am excited to expand my skill set in nurse research and evidence-based practice in order to provide up to date interventions and improve patient outcomes. As a future advanced practice nurse, it is a “professional, ethical responsibility to provide expert care, which requires an evidence-based approach” (Connor et al., 2023).
