Paper
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Nurses' Beliefs about EBP in the Community Setting
Rona F. Levin, PhD, RN, Lienhard School of Nursing/Education and Clinical Development, Pace University/Visiting Nurse Service of New York, Pleasantville, NY, USA
This presentation will focus on how a sample of visiting nurses and nurse managers, who work in a large New York City homecare organization, perceive evidence-based practice (EBP) and their ability to use it in their own clinical practice. Data were collected initially from 46 nurses as part of a pilot study to test the effectiveness of the ARCC (Advancing Research and Clinical Practice through Close Collaboration) model of introducing EBP to nurses in a clinical agency. After baseline data collection, the 46 nurses were randomly divided into an ARCC group and a control group. Data were then collected at 3 additional time points: one month later after didactic presentations about EBP; 4 months later after the ARCC group received mentoring in EBP, and one year later after the ARCC group developed and implemented an EBP project. Results demonstrated that nurses in both conditions at all time points demonstrated mild to moderate positive beliefs about EBP. Yet, at times 3 and 4, the ARCC group demonstrated significantly more positive scores than the control group. In addition reliability testing of the EBP Beliefs Scale demonstrated consistently high coefficient alphas at all time points.