Infuse It: Research

Knowledge of the research process is the basis of evidence-based practice (EBP), yet in our experience the research process is often poorly understood by graduate nurse practitioner (NP) students. These students are primarily focused on diagnosis, treatment, and management of patient conditions, and less focused on the search for and use of evidence to guide clinical decision making in practice.

Rather than solely relying on an EBP course in the curriculum, which is often taught in isolation from other courses, our aim is to bridge and thread research concepts throughout the NP program.  With this strategy, each course reviews foundational EBP principles and facilitates the student’s utilization of these principles in actual patient care situations.  By stressing the importance of primary research sources to establish EBP, the NP student can utilize these concepts throughout assignments and build confidence in their use in practice. This strategy will allow the foundation to spiral upward while the student continues to learn how to find, apply, and evaluate evidence in clinical course assignments.

Curriculums traditionally tend to teach research and EBP as isolated courses.  Application is left to the students because the traditional methods do not make the case of how research translates into or becomes evidence.  This practice perpetuates the gap of understanding and applying the research-driven evidence. Therefore it is essential to ensure that research principles and their importance in establishing evidence based practice is threaded thread throughout the clinical courses.

Supported in the literature are common educational strategies for teaching EBP in NP programs and include supporting clinical actions with references, the use of clinical logs and cases, integrative review papers, writing of clinical questions, noting practice changes, and the application of evidence in projects. This presentation will add more creative suggestions to the documented findings.