I chose my nursing career because I am passionate about caring for ill people and providing them with better care. This reflective paper will explore my journey over this semester's Evidence-Based Research for the Advanced-Practice Role course and how I have enhanced my understanding and application of evidence-based practice in providing compassionate quality patient care. Furthermore, I want to highlight my most significant accomplishment in this course, which I obtained from assignments and readings.
Developing and Maintaining an Evidence-Based Practice Over this Semester
As a registered nurse, I currently provide compassionate care based on my previous experience and knowledge from my mentors. However, as I pursue my goal of becoming an advanced practice nurse and taking advanced courses on evidence-based research, I now focus more critically on delivering evidence-based care to patients and look into evidence-based practice supported by peer-reviewed and statistically proven research.
Over this semester, my thinking on providing care to patients as an advanced practice nurse is that we are responsible for providing evidence-based practice to improve healthcare quality, improve patient outcomes, and educate nursing students to become safe, competent, and caring nurses. One example is understanding the role of research in evidence-based practice. I have realized the significance of peer-reviewed research, methodology, statistical validation, impact on informed clinical decision-making, and elimination of bias in research papers to make the study and analysis impartial and fair. I have learned how to evaluate research studies critically and use the findings to improve patient care. Throughout the semester, I have become more aware of the importance of delivering quality patient care backed by evidence-based research to ensure I continue to provide quality, safe patient care.
My Achievements in Evidence-Based Research in This Semester
During this semester, I made a significant accomplishment by developing an Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) question for one of my research assignments, which required me to identify a real-world issue, review relevant literature, and propose evidence-based solutions.
Currently, Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) use crystalloid fluids to treat trauma patients who experience hemorrhagic shock. However, I questioned whether administering plasma transfusions by EMTs before a patient reaches the hospital can improve the patient's chances of survival within 24 hours. I analyzed various studies to determine their effectiveness and quality and see if they could help find alternatives. In this EBP question, I concluded that administering plasma to patients with brain trauma, traumatic injury, gunshot wounds, or any wounds that would take more than 30 minutes to get to the hospital increases the chances of survival.
My biggest accomplishment is creating a PICOT (patient, intervention, comparison, and outcome) to identify a clinical problem and use the PICO(T) to frame a research EBP question. This process and findings will help me make informed decisions and modify a patient's treatment plan based on evidence-based research, resulting in better patient care. I consider this accomplishment significant because it will enable me to explore alternative options in current practice for patients facing various issues, such as women with breast cancer undergoing genetic testing and looking for alternatives without genetic testing. It has opened new opportunities to look deeper into clinical research and improve patient outcomes.
Conclusion
In summary, this semester has helped me get closer to becoming an advanced practice role and enabled me to develop an evidence-based approach to providing evidence-based practice care to those in need. My lessons and achievements have helped me think critically and provide evidence-based practice, resulting in better-quality patient care. Over the semester, I have understood that evidence-based research is not just for research purposes but has practical implications to improve patient care.