Using Focus Groups to Explore the Facilitators and Barriers of Evidence-Based Nursing Among Clinical Nurses

Background: The research on the facilitators and barriers of implementing evidence-based nursing (EBN) by nursing staff has been discussed overseas currently. However that application is limited for the clinical situations in Taiwan due to cultural context differences. Even though there have been a few domestic studies exploring the facilitators and barriers when implementing EBN by nursing staff, the results were not consistent. The use of focus groups approach of the qualitative research is supposed to be helpful to comprehensively understand the facilitators and barriers of EBN by nursing staff and then to effectively promote the practice of EBN.

Aims：This study will explore the barriers and facilitators affecting the evidence-based practices in order to find out the integrated models and strategies on evidence-based practices by using a qualitative research approach -focus groups among the seeded nurses of a teaching hospital.

Methods: Data will be collected by using focus groups with purposive sampling of recruiting evidence-based seeded nurses of our hospital. They are in high homogeneity and grouped into 4 to 5 focus groups by medicine divisions. Each group consists of 4 to 6 people in turn to be interviewed for 60 to 90 minutes per time section. In each focus group, an independent moderator will instruct the guidelines with 7 semi-structural issues that were examined by 2 qualitative experts beforehand. The reliability (trustworthiness) proposed by Lincoln and Guba is expected to adopt as the stringency control. Also, a content analysis will be conducted on the data obtained.

Anticipated outcomes: The focus groups will be organized between December 2016 and May 2017. The expected results is to find out the integrated models and strategies on promoting the evidence-based practices and present it as the reference for the study hospital as well as other domestic hospitals to further promote the implementation of EBN practices and enhance the effectiveness of patient care domestically.