Response Paper 1

Response Paper to Analyzing Research to Your Nursing Practice

Jordan Harris
1/17/09
NUR 4165
Prof. Pross
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Evidence Based Nursing Practice clearly has more impact on a day-to-day nursing

career that I had previously thought. Before starting my nursing education I though that

this was something left the Nurse DNP’s or ambitious master’s students; instead I found

that it should not only guide our decisions in everyday nursing situations but that we too

can and should contribute to the canon of knowledge that other nurses and medical care

givers practice from.

Evidence Based Nursing (EBN) in a nutshell is a mélange of a nurse’s practical

experience, scientific evidence, and once that has been reviewed then also taking into

account the patient’s culture and values before implementing an action (Eisenbarth 2005).

EBN is a holistic way of approaching nursing that takes into account the practical

experience and common sense of a nurse, the needs, desires and culture of the patient but

also takes into account the current research and evidence to steer the nurse to the right

course of action (Macnee 2008) . Many common activities in a nurse’s day are rote and

do not necessarily merit research on a day to day basis, but when an unusual situation or

patient comes along it is often worth researching the issue to review the current evidence

and theory on this patient or situation (Macnee 2008). By advising a nurse to research

when a he/she has been inspired by a patient or situation it seems that this is a good way

to add to a nurses’ education without being unreasonable about the amount of time they

have daily to devote to research.

Jenny Eisenbarth in her article entitled “Applying Research to your nursing

practice…Easy as 1,2,3” clearly aims her article at a currently practicing nurse. She

keeps her article short and to the point. In fact her title and the length of her article strive

to show that EBN can be easily applied by nurses, and in fact they are already doing it on
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a daily basis (Eisenbarth 2005). Her point is that many activities we perform by rote

every day, say hand washing, are clinical practices that came about because of Evidenced

Based Nursing and research (Eisenbarth 2005). Therefore we are already using EBN

practices and it is only one more small step to then doing some research of our own. The

“1,2,3” she refers to in her title are the three steps she outlines so that nurses move past

being passive learners and become active learners and possibly teachers. The first step is

to identify the problem, the second is search for answers and the third is to apply what

you have learned (Eisenbarth 2005). Basically she says to take a question or problem you

see everyday then research it to see what current journals say about the issue and then try

to address the problem or situation and apply that knowledge in your clinical setting

( Eisenbarth 2005).

Ms Eisenbarth in her article pushes us to discard the notion that nurses in a typical

clinical setting do not use EBN and cannot also actively participate in it. She shows that

you don’t have to be a nurse or doctor in an ivory tower doing only research to contribute

to the dialogue and implement findings from our own research to attempt to ameliorate

our patient’s lives and physical and mental outcomes. We as nurses leaving a school

setting need to remember that learning does not stop at the school’s steps but should

follow us into our clinical settings.

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References

Eisenbarth, J. (2005). Applying Research to Your Nursing Practice…Easy as 1, 2, 3. The

Kansas Nurse, 80(5), 4.

Macnee, C. L., & McCabe, S. (2008). Understanding Nursing Research: Reading and

Using Research in Evidence-Based Practice (2nd ed.). Philadelphia, PA:

Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.