Teaching Evidence-Based Practice Through Faculty-Librarian Collaboration

Implementation of evidence-based practice (EBP) in health care is key to improve health, safety, and cost in healthcare settings (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2011).  It is imperative that future nurses acquire the necessary knowledge and skills for EBP.    Educating undergraduate students on EBP has become an essential component of curriculum design. In order to effectively teach EBP, nurse educators must integrate information literacy skills.  However, there is generally a lack of skills and expertise on how to teach these skills. Traditionally, academic librarians provide research assistance and information literacy instruction to the campus community. In order to successfully educate undergraduate students on EBP, it is vital that nurse educators collaborate with librarians. This presentation describes how a nursing faculty and librarian collaborated to teach undergraduate students through an EBP project.

 There are many strategies that have been used for collaboration between nurse educators and librarians. For example, a librarian designs and teaches a one-hour class or workshop solely on information literacy (Dorner,Taylor & Hodson-Carlton, 2001; Schulte & Sherwill- Navarro, 2009). Another strategy involves the librarian actively contributing in the curriculum design process for the School of Nursing (SON).  Both of these strategies are currently used at North Park University’s School of Nursing.  Information Literacy is strategically integrated into the undergraduate-nursing curriculum.  The nursing librarian and SON faculty members collaborated to scaffold information literacy objectives and learning outcomes for designated courses in the undergraduate curriculum. The nursing librarian also created customized online research guides for each course that requires information literacy instruction.

The Research Process in Professional Nursing course introduces students to the elements of the research process with emphasis on becoming a consumer of research.  The course focuses on the relevance of research findings to evidence-based quality care. Prior to the collaboration between the course faculty and the librarian, there was lack of communication about the assignments and learning objectives for the course.  In order to improve student learning, the faculty and librarian worked closely to teach, revise and assess the process for teaching information literacy. The faculty and librarian used team-based learning through in-class activities, worksheets, and an EBP team project. Students worked in EBP teams to develop a practice problem, question, PICO elements, and search strategy. A worksheet and take-home exercise was also used to reinforce key information literacy concepts. The librarian provided feedback for the worksheet and take-home exercise. After the teams developed their practice question, the librarian also provided one-on-one research consultations to each EBP team. Based on the assessment of students’ understanding on the take-home exercise and on an exam, the faculty and librarian successfully worked together to revise EBP teaching and learning outcomes. In short, close collaboration between nurse educators and librarians is essential to achieve student-learning outcomes in learning EBP (Hallyburton & St. John, 2010).