Paper
Saturday, November 3, 2007
84
Can New Instruments Reliably Evaluate the Integration of Evidence-Base-Practice (EBP) in Nursing Curricula?
Susan B. Stillwell, MSN, RN, CNE, College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA
According to the National League for Nurses (2006), faculty are committed to infuse evidence-based practice into nursing curricula, and eighty-eight percent of the faculty responding to the survey reported that they provide learning experiences to enhance EBP. While there is movement toward EBP in nursing curricula, a recent study demonstrated that nurses have a paucity of knowledge and understanding of EBP (Pravikoff et al., 2005). Although, attitude alone was a powerful predictor of using research findings in practice (Lacey, 1994), there lacks research on measuring attitudes and implementation of EBP as a means to evaluating evidence-based practice in nursing education. This presentation will illustrate how 2 scales effectively evaluated the integration of EBP content and learning activities in an upper division undergraduate nursing program at a large university in the southwest United States. The sample was approximately 500 students in a BSN program on four campus sites; both junior and senior level courses integrated EBP across all sites. Information about how the Evidence-Based Practice Beliefs (EBPB) Scale and the Evidence-Based Practice Implementation (EBPI) Scale (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2003) performed in evaluation of the EBP curriculum will be presented. The relationship among EBP content, learning experience exposure, the student’s beliefs, and implementation of EBP across courses and campus sites also will be discussed.