Paper
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
582
Unit Readiness for EBP: When Unit Governance Makes All RNs Responsible
Priscilla Sandford Worral, PhD, RN, University Hospital, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA
| Learning Objective #1: describe unit-level contextual factors most related to variation in staff nurses' perceptions of readiness for evidence-based practice. |
| Learning Objective #2: describe internal consistency and initial construct validity of an instrument modified to measure unit-level variation in perceived EBP readiness. |
Despite the increasing support for evidence-based practice (EBP) in the professional literature and demand from both the public and private sectors that patient care decisions be evidence-based, many nurses remain unaware of or ill-prepared for EBP. When a change in the nursing shared governance structure from a representative councilor model to a unit-level model meant that all staff nurses were expected to actively engage in evidence-based review and revision of clinical policies, readiness for EBP took on increased importance for nursing staff and managers at one academic medical center. The Institutional Readiness for Integration of Evidence-based Practice Survey developed by Fineout-Overholt and Melnyk (2005) was modified, with permission, to measure EBP readiness at the unit level. This session will present results of initial psychometric testing of the modified scale, and, equally importantly, will present evidence that nurses’ perceptions of EBP readiness vary by unit even when resources exist at the institutional level.