The Fork in the Road: Preparing Faculty to Support Evidence Based Practice Projects

Overview: Advanced practice registered nurses prepared at the Masters level have historically become informed research consumers through the application of research, often demonstrating competency through completion of a thesis or “mini” dissertation.  The 1996 AACN Essentials of Master's Education for Advanced Practice Nursing clearly discourages primary data collection while articulating the importance of research utilization.  Students must therefore be taught to think reflectively, integrate multiple sources of knowledge, and weave nursing theory and research into practice in some other way.  The question for faculty is how to ensure that students are competent in the research domain without using the traditional research methodology tools. Over the past year, the faculty at the University have completely overhauled the Masters scholarly project requirement in preparation for implementation of a BSN to DNP program.  Sweeping changes were made to the curriculum, including abandoning group projects, implementing “just in time” faculty training and transitioning to a student portfolio model to more clearly articulate student competencies across a variety of domains.  This workshop will discuss how the project champions moved the process forward through the curriculum and All Faculty committees, how faculty concerns about workload are being addressed, how faculty mentoring is operationalized and how the development of a clinical case scenario is providing amazingly rich context for the formation of student PICOT questions.