An Innovative Strategy for Teaching Evidence-Based Decision-Making to Nurse Leaders

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a movement that has captured the attention of health care providers and organizations as they engage in efforts to improve clinical care outcomes. The EBP movement began with evidence-based medicine. This medical trend evolved to influence other professions including nursing. The dramatic increase in EBP over the past 10 years has left many nurses struggling to sort through an overwhelming amount of EBP information including the knowledge and skills needed to make decisions through the EBP lens. Nurse leaders are key to the success of evidence-based practice. 

The goal of this session is to introduce an innovative strategy for teaching evidence-based decision-making to nurse leaders. The approach employed active learning and group participation while integrating the learning into a standing-meeting for these nurse leaders. In addition, this innovative approach did not include traditionally accepted teaching strategies (e.g. PowerPoint presentation) rather, the nurse leaders engaged in dialogue as they actively worked through each of the processes of evidence-based decision-making. This session will provide an overview of the timeline for this strategy and findings from pre and post data collected regarding the nurse leaders self-reported knowledge and skills with evidence-based decision-making. Anecdotal examples will be shared to illuminate the lessons-learned from this strategy.    

At the completion of this session, the participant will be able to: 1) describe the pivotal role of the nurse leader in successfully implementing, embedding, and sustaining evidence-based practice; 2) identify innovative strategies to engage nurse leaders in learning the knowledge and skills needed to integrate EBP as an approach to decision-making.