Description/Overview: Across the globe, nurses want to provide care that promotes the best outcomes for their patients. Fostering excellence in patient care through evidence-based practice (EBP) brings nurses together world-wide. Collaboration that supports an exchange of knowledge, skills and resources among nurses can help to achieve the vision of global EBP. This symposium describes experiences encountered as the result of a technical agreement between an academic nursing unit in the Southwestern United States and the Pan American Health Organization. Through the technical agreement, nurses at the point of care, administrators and faculty blended their expertise, resources, knowledge and skills to provide opportunities for learning about EBP principles to enhance the abilities of nurses in the Pan Americas and globally to practice based on evidence as well as incorporate EBP in the nursing curricula. The vision for establishing collaborations among nurses from diverse backgrounds that focus on achieving quality health outcomes through EBP will be presented. The challenges and barriers that nurses confront in the United States and the Pan Americas will be discussed. The symposium will culminate in an outline of future planned activities that will expand collaborations to advance EBP as a standard of practice across the globe.

Learner Objective #1: Describe the vision for EBP as the global standard for healthcare.

Learner Objective #2: Discuss solutions to challenges and barriers to EBP that are common among nurses with diverse backgrounds.