Nursing Staff Awareness about Evidence Based Practice: Facilitations, Barriers and Beliefs

Background: Today evidence-based practice (EBP) becomes one of the best ways that used for
making clinical decisions and has an effect on health care outcomes as well as it improves the quality of
care provided to patients. Aim: Assess nursing staff awareness about evidence based practice
facilitations, barriers and beliefs at Belqas Central Hospital (BCH). Design: Cross sectional design.
Settings: current study was carried out at Belqas Central Hospital (BCH), affiliated to Ministry Of
Health, Dakahlia Governorate. Subjects: the study was conducted on nursing staff (228). Data collection
tools: Data was collected using evidence based practice (EBP) questionnaire, Facilitators to change
practice based on evidence based practice scale, barriers to find, use and review evidence scale and
evidence based practice beliefs scale. Results: revealed that the highest total mean score of facilitations
was related to organizational structure and health care environment while the lowest mean score was
related to research information. As well as the highest total mean score of barriers was related to
individual nurse characteristics while the lowest mean score was related to research information. Also
69% of nursing staff were agreeing with EBP, realizing its benefits and importance. Conclusion: nursing
staff focus on their experience and ways that always used in providing nursing care as a source for their
information. In addition to most of them were competent in fifinding, reviewing and using evidence in
practice. Organizational structure and health care environment was perceived as a main facilitation of
EBP, while individual nurse characteristics were perceived as the highest barriers of EBP. Most nursing
staff had positive beliefs about EBP and realized its benefits in health care system. Recommendations:
Ongoing training programs about EBP for nursing staff, maintaining adequate staffing in different shift
to relieve nurses’ workload and help them to attain workshops and scientific conferences that updating
and increasing their knowledge about EBP. Provide organizational support for EBP implementation.
Translating the most relevant researches and distributed them for nurses to apply in practice to overcome
the English language barrier. Increasing interest in the research and EBP process through integrating the
EBP strategies in nursing curriculum.