Leadership Literacy: Strategies for Leadership to Support Bringing Evidence to the Bedside

In today's professional nursing practice environment it is imperative for evidence-based practice (EBP) translation to occur at a more rapid pace. As the delay continues between research and translation, leaders are needed at the forefront to facilitate EBP becoming and being a sustaining part of patient care practices. Leadership must also play a significant role in cultivating the conditions for supporting and enabling EBP translation. The knowledge deficit is present among the leadership as well as the belief and skill set required to support EBP at the frontline. Now is the time for creating cultures in the acute care settings for increasing quality care, reducing risk, reducing healthcare cost, and considering the patient experience in clinical practice. Therefore, healthcare leadership is critical to building and establishing a culture that will believe, embrace, mentor, and champion the idea of bringing evidence to the bedside.

This paper will discuss identification of the current problem in the acute care setting, an innovative instructional methodology of "edutainment" to improve the process, and the necessity for expanded knowledge of leadership to be at the helm of supporting and mentoring teams to increase EBP at the point of care. The intervention consists of the nursing leaders participating in a four-hour, innovative, interactive, evidence-based practice “edutainment” workshop show and training methodology based on entertaining for engagement as well as a designed to teach material that would be considered tedious and challenging to understand (Woratanarat, 2014). There will be two points for data collection with a validated instrument to provide baseline data and data following the intervention. The Evidence-Based Practice Belief Scale (EBPB), a 16 point Likert–item scale for measuring beliefs, intent to use and recognize EBP will provide outcome measures.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) expects healthcare systems to make significant improvements in patient safety to decrease errors with improved quality and to utilize the approach of EBP implementation as a means for achieving this goal (Melnyk, 2012). Practice recommendation is to provide effective training for leadership to gain the knowledge and skills needed to support, mentor, and become champions of evidence-based practice translation, the essential elements lacking in the acute care setting. Therefore, providing an effective, innovative training program will increase awareness, belief, knowledge and skills set to move EBP implementation forward for a higher quality of care, reducing cost, and ultimately positively impacting the patient experience. As we look to make a difference using innovative methodologies to engage leaders to utilize and champion EBP, we can simultaneously envision global relevance for our nation via widespread use of EBP at the point of care for optimal outcomes.

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