EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE IN NURSING RESEARCH
Greenberg (2004) defines Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) in nursing as the use of evidence to support decisions made in providing patient care. She also notes that the relationship of nursing research to EBP is clear in that research in the profession provides the prime source of evidence or the confirmatory data that is and should be used to make healthcare decisions.
The purpose of this paper is review a study utilizing EBP and discuss it in terms of the literature pertaining to this mode of practice. The article reviewed is related to evidenced based nursing practice in the area of critical care which is my area of specialty. The article reviewed is by Henker (1999) and pertains to fever-related interventions in critical care situations.
Before reviewing the article, it is important to note that according to Melnyk and Fineout-Overholt (2005) there are three primary components associated with EBP which pertain to the nature of the conducted research and the level of evidence that can be associated with it. These component are said to be: systematic reviews of clinical trials said to yield the highest level of evidence as the information is derived from research that is well controlled; descriptive (sometimes called correlational) research in which the data or the information given comes from less controlled studies; and qualitative research which yields data/evidence using the least amount of methodological control.
With respect to the foregoing, it can be noted that Henker's (1999) discussion of fever-related interventions in critical care situations consisted of a systematic review of research involving clinical trials and therefore can be said to yield strong evidence for consideration in terms of fever-related care. In this regard, Cook (2003) reports that systematic reviews of existing research are the heart of the EBP paradigm. These reviews integrate information an...