Packed with examples from practice across the nursing fields and at different levels, this book is essential for nurses – both student and qualified – who want to increase their confidence when it comes to research appraisal, the research process and evidence-based practice processes.
This new edition provides a straightforward guide to evidence-based practice, helping you to increase your understanding of the processes involved in accessing, appraising, synthesizing, and implementing good quality research.
Providing a basic introduction to both quantitative and qualitative research, Debra Evans explores how to find out “what works best”, “how does that make someone feel”, and what requires more research. You will also learn the basic rules used in study design and statistics presented in research articles and systematic reviews and develop the knowledge necessary to challenge practice that is not underpinned by research. Each simply written chapter includes relevant theory, diagrams and tables, hypothetical nursing scenarios, exercises, a summary, and further reading. This edition includes two new chapters that look at how to get evidence implemented into practice to meet practice goals, and provide advice and tips to help with research assignments and dissertations to meet learner goals.
Packed with examples from practice across the nursing fields and at different levels, this book is essential for nurses – both student and qualified – who want to increase their confidence when it comes to research appraisal, the research process and evidence-based practice processes.
1. Introduction to research and evidence-based practice, Step 1: Pose a
focused research question,
2. How do you put together a good, focused
research question?, Step 2: Search for the evidence,
3. How do you search for
evidence to answer that question?, Step 3: Critically appraise the evidence,
4. When you have found some evidence, how do you know if its any good?,
5.
Lets talk about the characteristics of a quantitative design the
randomised controlled trial,
6. Some non-randomised quantitative designs
quasi-experiments, cohort studies, and case-control studies,
7. What are
effect measures for dichotomous outcomes,
8. What are effect measures for
continuous outcomes?,
9. How do you critically appraise quantitative evidence
such as RCTs?,
10. Lets talk about characteristics of some qualitative
designs phenomenology, ethnography, and grounded theory,
11. How do you
critically appraise qualitative evidence?, Step 4: Make a decision to
implement the evidence,
12. Why we need systematic reviews and initiatives
like the Cochrane Library,
13. Clinical guidelines,
14. Implementation how
do you meet your practice goals?, 15 How to meet your learner goals and pass
research assignments and dissertations,
16. Your role in all of this?
Debra Evans is a senior lecturer at Birmingham City University, UK.
