Paper
Saturday, 22 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Supporting Evidence-Based Nursing: Educational Initiatives
Where is the “Evidence”? Finding the Evidence to Support Your Nursing Practice: An Innovative Collaborative Offering for Clinical Nursing Staff Between Nursing Service, a College of Nursing and a Health Professions Library
Margaret Williams, DNSc, RN1, Arlis Dittmer, MA, MALS1, and Julie Dietrich, BS2. (1) Blessing-Rieman College of Nursing, Quincy, IL, USA, (2) Blessing Health Professions Library, Blessing-Rieman College of Nursing, Quincy, IL, USA
Learning Objective #1: describe a program to introduce staff nurses to methods to find evidence based research pertinent to their clinical practice.
Learning Objective #2: describe collaborative partnerships that can be fostered between colleges of nursing, nursing service and health professional librarians.
The current nursing staff, who will be serving as preceptors in a HRSA funded Nurse Residency Program, need to be knowledgeable consumers of evidence based practice research and current resources to guide both their own practice and those new nurse residents in a Nurse Residency Program. The following program was designed to support the use of evidence based literature in the clinical decision making role of the staff nurse. It features the collaboration between the nursing faculty, library staff, and nursing staff practicing in a rural medical center and critical access hospital.
Purpose:   Practicing RNs in either the preceptor or nurse resident role will function at the at the novice level in finding literature that supports their practice.
The preceptor course and residency course for the new HRSA funded Nurse Residency Program offers a hands- on and mentored information retrieval and database searching session. All RNs, both preceptors and residents, regardless of their years of nursing practice complete either an online or small group session  They are guided in exploring the evidence for a clinical question using the following tools.  
The program will be described with attention paid to  course evaluations and practice findings related to the use of evidence based concepts and principles. Course focus areas included; Ventilator Associated Pneumonia, post-op wound care and the national “Saving 100,000 Lives Initiative.”

See more of Supporting Evidence-Based Nursing: Educational Initiatives
See more of The 17th International Nursing Research Congress Focusing on Evidence-Based Practice (19-22 July 2006)