Assessment 2 Instructions: Determining the Credibility of Evidence and Resources • Develop a 2-4 page scholarly paper in which you describe a quality or safety issue or a chosen diagnosis, and then identify and analyze credible evidence that could be used as the basis for applying EBP to the issue.

Determining the Credibility of Evidence and Resources

Quality or Safety Issue

The chosen quality issue is a new nurse on a medical-surgical unit assigned to a middle-aged man suffering from a spinal injury. The newly trained nurse identified the risk of developing pressure ulcers as the patient is immobilized and made a nursing diagnosis of the risk of impaired skin integrity. After initial guidance and personal research, the nurse still experiences difficulties determining the credibility of the online medical sources. Maintaining skin integrity among hospitalized patients is a critical goal in nursing care. Interventions aim to prevent and restore skin integrity and are a multidisciplinary convergence of expertise and critical thinking skills. Ensuring high-quality and safe plans in the hospital relies on current best evidence. Therefore, developing an evidence-based practice culture on comprehensive skin integrity programs would prevent at-risk patients from developing them. Although they are treatable, nurses using evidence-based best practices would be able to implement appropriate measures such as repositioning techniques, monitoring, and other continuous care strategies to manage and prevent pressure ulcers (Mitchell, 2018).

Criteria for Determining Credibility of Resources

Nurses are continually challenged to identify, locate, and use credible and reliable information that informs their decision-making in evidence-based practice (EBP). Advances in technology and the growth of the internet world have resulted in more sophisticated search engines and robust databases. These factors modify the breadth of online information and change how nurses arrive at clinical information. Determining the credibility of a source involves a systematic approach that considers different aspects. The first step is to check whether the article is relevant to the risk of impairment of skin integrity. It is important to understand and detect alternative terms used interchangeably, such as pressure injuries, sores, or decubitus ulcers. The criteria ensure that only sources relevant to the patient or the diagnosis are accessed and reviewed. Other measures to be considered include the timeliness of the article, the authority commanded by the institution or author of the article on the topic, the intended audience, and the general perspective of the article.

Nursing is a science, and nurse scientists address health barriers, generate new information, and translate evidence to practice (Chesak et al., 2022). Their training and technical expertise help nurses to make the initial exclusion or inclusion criteria for the different sources. The addresses of different websites help to determine the credibility of a source. Domain suffixes give a clue about the purpose of the website and the article on it. Commercial sites have .com suffixes that usually serve a specific purpose in product promotion. The information may not be misleading, but it usually does not offer the complete picture. Educational institutions use .edu, and government domains have .gov .org are typically owned by non-profit organizations such as the Red Cross. The latter three websites tend to have increasingly credible information than commercial websites. Openly biased URL names, absent author names, and the presence of advertisement pop-ups that may cover content and outdated content suggest that the source is not credible. However, seemingly credible sources such as peer-reviewed articles may not be credible.

Some articles the nurse may encounter could pass as credible, evidence-based sources. However, it is important to differentiate between randomized control studies (RCTs) and systematic reviews. High-quality RCTs provide the most credible and reliable evidence. Systematic reviews summarize many high-quality primary studies to answer a specific question. Therefore, the nurse should be able to differentiate between case studies, controlled trials, and systematic reviews. The knowledge will help them understand the type and quality of information to expect from the different types of articles. Systematic reviews offer the most credible source, followed by evidence synthesis papers and critically appraised individual articles. These contain carefully filtered information. Expert reports from professional organizations or government agencies are the least credible sources. However, they can still offer good insights into managing and preventing the nursing diagnosis of impaired skin integrity and equip the nurse with technical know-how for quality nursing care to the patient.