Assessing Knowledge of Evidence-Based Practice among Nurses

Section 1: Nature of the Project Introduction Evidence-based practice (EBP) is recognized globally. The translation of evidence into practice has a role in ensuring quality care, patient safety, and improved patient outcomes (Smith & Donze, 2010). Nursing care is advancing to the point where it is not enough to deliver treatment interventions. Rather, it is essential that it provide significant role in ensuring quality care, essential that it provide quality care using the best available evidence. EBP, therefore, is emerging as a widely accepted paradigm for professional nursing practice. Numerous researchers claim the fact that EBP fosters quality health care, improved health outcomes, and reduced health care costs (Melnyk, Fineout-Overholt, Gallagher-Ford, & Kaplan, 2012; Melnyk, Gallagher-Ford, Long, & Fineout-Overholt, 2014; Pravikoff, Tanner, & Pierce, 2005). In addition to the three benefits listed above, EBP can also reduce rising health care costs, assist changes in professional roles with updated current knowledge to identify clinical problems. It incorporate new evidence into clinical practice reduce medication errors, implement the best care knowledge for patient care for the proper clinical decision making and patient outcomes(Rycroft-Malone & Bucknall, 2010; Stevens,2013;White&Dudley-Brown, 2012). The Institute of Medicine (IOM) reported in To Err is Human (2000) that health care in the United States was in a poor state. The report has since become a rallying call for evidence-based, knowledge-driven improvements in health care in order to improve more desirable outcomes. The EBP movement was accelerated by the publication of two