Impact of Formal Education on Evidence-based Practice Competence of Nurse Teams

Consistent, high quality healthcare is not provided to all people in the United States.  Even with widespread efforts from technological advances and processes to improve patient safety, preventable harm events occur daily resulting in 400,000 premature deaths per year (James, 2013).  The skill set needed for problem-solving which integrates the best evidence from well-designed studies to inform practice decisions, is new, and as a result, requires structured education in a systematic approach (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2015).  A standardized process must be used for teaching, implementing and sustaining evidence-based decision making both in the clinical and leadership environments.  

A longitudinal approach with multiple pre/post evaluations of EBP competence following an educational workshop is proposed.  Tri-level teams will attend a five-day workshop and develop EBP projects to address an issue in their facility.  At 3-, 6-, and 12-months post workshop, the teams will receive mentoring and guidance from the project team on their ongoing EBP projects. Data collection will be done electronically with valid and reliable tools to measure EBP beliefs, implementation, knowledge and competencies.  In addition, a tool to assess organizational culture and readiness will be completed pre- and post-workshop.  Data will be analyzed using descriptive statistics as well as correlations, independent and paired t-tests, ANOVAs and multiple regression analyses on individuals,  organizational groups,  and  levelled groups across organizations.  

The Specific Aims of this project are to measure:

1.  Participants’ Perceptions of Organizational Culture and Readiness for EBP inmembers of Tri-level
     Military Teams prior to and 12-months post-educational workshop.

2.  Participants’ EBP Knowledge, Skills, and Attitude (competence) prior to attending, immediately after,
     and at 3-, 6-, and 12 months post-educational workshop.

3.  EBP project implementation progress and outcomes at 3- 6- and 12-months post-educational