1-2 objectives for the presentation
- Explain how an academic-practice partnership specifically met an identified need for the advancement of EBP knowledge and skills in a critical access hospital.
- Describe the role students played in creating, presenting, and evaluating outcomes of an educational model designed to advance EBP among nurses of a critical access hospital.
Background/significance: Critical access hospitals often lack resources for supporting continuing education and EBP. The CNO of a critical access hospital substantiated this challenge by voicing a need for her staff nurses to be educated on EBP during a Research Consortium meeting involving nurse leaders from academia and practice. The objective of the Research Consortium was to combine resources from academia and practice to advance nursing research and practice. The critical access hospital lacked the resources to provide ongoing education for their nurses so faculty from an undergraduate nursing program proposed a collaborative partnership that included students in the project.
Strategy: With faculty supervision, students designed short interactive learning activities to engage the staff nurses in exploration of the process of EBP and how to conduct a literature search, use scholarly resources, and appraise evidence. The students also helped to expand the scope of literature searches for the critical access hospital’s EBP projects through use of the University databases. Students and faculty evaluated the project in a pretest/ posttest research design to measure the nurses’ beliefs about EBP and the nurses’ application of EBP knowledge and skills. Pretest data was gathered in the spring of 2016 and posttest data was collected in the spring of 2018.
Outcomes: All stakeholders in the partnership reported beneficial professional development outcomes. The results of the research demonstrated that the partnership yielded an increase in the staff nurses’ self-efficacy regarding EBP and the staff nurses’ application of EBP in their nursing practice. The students gained experience and confidence with applying EBP knowledge as well as designing educational offerings. Additionally, the students gained skills that aided in their professional development such as training in human subject protection, implementing the research process, writing abstracts, presenting at professional conferences, and applying for grants.
Implications: The Research Consortium served as a catalyst for optimizing regional resources in a way that promoted professional growth and development for nurses and future nurses. The collaborative partnership served as an exemplar of how neighboring nursing programs offer an innovative solution for rural hospitals who may not have robust educational resources. Furthermore, opportunities exist to optimize BSN student knowledge and skills toward projects that may improve the quality of patient care.
See more of: Symposia: Research Sessions