We live in a digital reality. General public is increasingly turning to Dr. Google in matters of health. And in many cases general public trusts Dr. Google more than to the experts or authorities. Vocational education, experience, knowledge, professional nursing practice are attacked with flood of information (often false, unscientific) which are available potentially to all people 24 hours a day. On stage there are self-diagnosis or self-treatment procedures. And the reality is that also some health professionals present information, or procedures that are not based on scientific principles. On the counterparts is evidence-based nursing (EBN).
In the theory, health care based upon evidence, is quite old, but it is a new paradigm in today daily clinical nursing. It replaces traditional nursing paradigm based upon authority. Evidence based nursing (EBM) depends ideally on study and use of many evidence based published resources like the controlled trials, systematic surveys and reviews and meta-analyses amongst others. EBN practice should represent the integration of individual nursing clinical experience and the best available external evidence, so nursing care should be effective, safe and accurate. EBN always starts and ends with the patient.
EBN definition by Scott (Journal of Clinical Nursing, 2009) is: “An ongoing process by which evidence, nursing theory and the practitioners’ clinical expertise are critically evaluated and considered, in conjunction with patient involvement, to provide delivery of optimum nursing care for the individual.”
Evidence-based nursing is today crucial approach that may empower nurses to manage the explosion of new literature and technology and ultimately may result in improved diagnostics and treatment outcomes of patient.
Nursing students spend a great deal of preclinical study time with designing care plans, reviewing pathophysiology, and memorizing pharmacologic interactions, etc. Although these activities are useful, they cannot be the only methods of preparing students for nursing practice.
Single reliance on textbooks and expert faculty knowledge does not promote the critical thinking skills that nurses must have to survive in the current fast paced team clinical settings. Students must learn to develop independent, evidence-based methods of clinical decision making. Both medical and nursing professionals have investigated this change in healthcare practice, research and knowledge development, a paradigm shift called "evidence based practice".
It is all health care professionals responsibility to educate themselves appropriately and continually in these fields of medicine and nursing based on evidence in order to create a more effective communication platform to laymen misuse of flood of unscientific information in the field of patient healthcare.
prof. MUDr. Dušan Meško, PhD.
Comenius University in Bratislava, Jessenius Medical Faculty in Martin