Nursing Students' Knowledge, Attitudes, and Application of Evidence-Based Practice at the University of Rwanda

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is an important component in improving the health care outcomes of a country’s population. Despite the importance and relevance of EBP to nursing, nurses do not routinely understand and use evidence-based principles in their everyday practice. This may influence the attitudes and knowledge of students who do not become exposed to the practice of EBP during their training. Nurses, who are considered to be the backbone of the health care profession, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, should be introduced to the basic principles of EBP during their pre-registration programmes. Moreover, EBP teaching input should be both theoretical and practical with a continuity throughout the whole nursing programme.

The aim of this study was to determine the knowledge of, attitudes towards and application of EBP by nursing students from the College of Medicine and Health Sciences at the University of Rwanda. The study design was quantitative, descriptive and non-experimental. An anonymous, self-reported questionnaire was used to collect data from third- and fourth-year nursing students from the College of Medicine and Health Sciences. Ethical approval was obtained from the Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Cape Town’s Health Sciences Faculty, and from the Directorate of Science, Technology and Research at the Rwandan Ministry of Education. Data were analysed by means of descriptive statistics.                                                                                                                                     

The results indicated that most of the third- and fourth-year nursing students at the University of Rwanda had some knowledge of EBP. Thus, respondents reported some negative attitudes towards EBP; no relationship between the respondents’ attitudes and their year of study was noted. Only 12% (n=10) of the respondents reported accessing evidence every day. Most respondents reported using the Internet as their primary source of evidence, with limited use of best evidence databases such Cochrane and Medline. The most common barriers to the implementation of EBP were lack of knowledge, lack of time, and the lack of examples or role modelling from lecturers, clinical instructors and nurse.

Further efforts to integrate EBP as a continuous theoretical and practical part of the nursing curriculum should be made in order to promote the effective use of evidence in practice by students at the College of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Rwanda.