Ladder to Success for EBP

Evidence-based practice (EBP), crucial to all healthcare disciplines today, is an essential element in any nursing curriculum. It is critical that the foundation be laid early in the undergraduate nursing curriculum and threaded throughout all levels of nursing education. The University of North Florida has created a ladder for success in EBP that begins with BSN competencies and continues for graduate nursing students to the masters and DNP competencies.  

At the baccalaureate level, students progress through a series of three nursing science courses in which principles of EBP are introduced. These principles are then threaded throughout all of their other nursing courses both in the classroom and in the clinical area. The master’s level builds on this foundation, with a research methods course that focuses on understanding of research design. Integral to this course is the identification of important clinical questions for advanced practice nursing and the discovery, critical appraisal, and synthesis of the evidence related to that question. EBP is the basis for all clinical courses. At the DNP level, students examine more critically all components of EBP clinical decision-making, including understanding and critiquing the evidence, as well as incorporation of the knowledge and expertise of the clinician and the wishes and desires of the patient and family in making those decisions. In a two-course sequence, students explore a clinical question and develop an evidence-based practice change protocol. This protocol is implemented and evaluated as their DNP Capstone Project.

The UNF School of Nursing has been using this model of progressive development of knowledge and skills in evidence-based practice since 2008. Graduates of UNF’s various nursing programs are now actively participating on nursing research councils at their places of employment. To date, there have been more than 30 evidence-based practice related publications and presentations by undergraduate, masters, and DNP students who completed their degrees at UNF.

Careful leveling of EBP concepts beginning at the baccalaureate level and progressing through the DNP lays a firm foundation for full integration of EBP in all levels of nursing practice.