Paper
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Evidence-Based Practice: Infrastructure Support at the Unit Level
Kristine M. Brindak, BS, RN, CCRP, University Hospital, University Hospital, Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA
At its inception in 1995, the Nursing Research Council in this 350-bed teaching medical center was comprised of Masters prepared clinical nurse specialists and educators. Since that time, implementation of shared governance and an increased presence of staff nurses on practice decision making bodies has required that direct care nurses become competent users of evidence and teachers of evidence-based practice among their peers. Unit managers have faced the difficult tasks of relinquishing some of their traditional control over practice. As important and equally if not more difficult, managers found themselves being asked to provide support to enable their staff nurses to learn about and use a practice base that even some of them did not understand. To complicate the situation, nurses not on Councils resented time spent by their peers away from the bedside. This session will address these barriers and present strategies that continue to be implemented to support and expand evidence-based nursing practice both on the nursing unit and across the institution.
Back to Staff Nurse-Driven Evidence Generation and Use: Supporting the Process
Back to Evidence-Based Nursing: Strategies for Improving Practice
Sigma Theta Tau International
July 21, 2004