Exploring nurse beliefs and perceived readiness for system wide integration of evidence based practice in a large pediatric health care system.

Purpose: Evidence-based practice (EBP) within healthcare leads to improved patient outcomes, high-quality care, job satisfaction, reduced turnover, professional autonomy, and validates nursing practice. Although a plethora of research focuses on implementing EBP, there has been little attention on assessing organizational readiness for integration. The primary aims of this study were to explore nursing beliefs and attitudes about EBP and explore the culture and readiness among pediatric nurses for system-wide integration of EBP.

Design And Methods: This study was a quantitative, cross-sectional survey-based study conducted at a large pediatric health system.

Results: Overall pediatric nurses had a mean score of 61.78 ± 9.32 on the EBPB (n = 396). Results of the EBPB Scale and OCRSIEP showed no statistical difference between nursing roles EBPB scores; however, nursing leaders had higher scores than any other nursing role. The OCRSIEP had a mean score of 84.98 ± 19.53 (n = 388).

Conclusions: Findings suggest that pediatric nurses believe that EBP results in the best clinical care for patients and can improve clinical care, but they lack the skills and time necessary to engage in the process. This study found that increasing awareness of EBP resources and developing EBP competencies may assist pediatric nurse leaders with EBP integration into daily practice.

Practice Implications: Increasing visibility and competencies of EBP may positively impact organizational readiness by increasing confidence needed to remove identified barriers and engrain EBP in the organization's culture.