The purpose of this paper is to apply what you have learned about evidence based practice and best practices in high acuity settings to your experience in the clinical site.

To get started: Consider a nursing practice you observe at the clinical site this semester. This should be something you see nurses doing. It could be something done by one individual nurse or a policy/procedure of the hospital. Remember when you use a hospital policy you must cite the policy. (This is not difficult, but often overlooked.) Identify if the practice is within the agency policies/procedures. Explore whether there is evidence to support this practice, or if the practice is simply continued because it is familiar. Search the literature to find support for the practice or evidence that it should be changed.
Specific Content Elements

1. Clearly identify and describe the nursing practice observed. Identify how the actual practice does or does not reflect the agency policy/procedure
2. Discuss the support (or lack of support) from the literature for the practice
3. Based on the evidence, discuss why this practice is being done. Is it based on evidence? If not, why are nurses doing it?

Criteria

1. Length 5-6 pages (does not include title or reference page)
2. Content requirements are contained above.
3. Retain this assignment for future requirements of the program.
4. Refer to APA 6th Edition requirements
5. Include an abstract (see additional resources for writing the abstract)
6. Avoid use of abbreviations and jargon

Resources:

1. Required to use 3 Medical/Nursing Journal articles less than 5 years old
2. Additional resources must be reputable.
3. All sources whether paraphrased or directly quoted MUST be cited in text and on the reference page
4. No long quotes
5. 1 or less short quotes allowed – the rest the information must be paraphrased and cited
6. MAY not use Wikipedia and any non-professional.com websites