Nurse Education Today
Volume 29, Issue 8 , Pages 829-834, November 2009

Views on evidence from nursing and midwifery opinion leaders

  • Donna Waters

      Affiliations

    • Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Building M02, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
    • Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author. Tel.: +61 2 9114 4036; fax: +61 2 9351 0779.
    • ,
  • Lucie Rychetnik

      Affiliations

    • Sydney Health Projects Group, School of Public Health, Medical Foundation Building K25, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
    • Tel.: +61 2 9036 3449; fax: +61 2 9036 3455.
    • ,
  • Jackie Crisp

      Affiliations

    • Sydney Children’s Hospital and the Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery and Health, City Campus, University of Technology, Sydney, P.O. Box 123, Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia
    • Tel.: +61 9382 1797; fax: +61 2 9382 1140.
    • ,
  • Alexandra Barratt

      Affiliations

    • School of Public Health, Edward Ford Building A27, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
    • Tel.: +61 2 9351 5103; fax: +61 2 9351 7420.

Accepted 9 April 2009. published online 25 May 2009.

Summary 

National registration standards in Australia require nurses and midwives to be educationally prepared to use an evidence-based framework for their practice. These standards assume a shared professional understanding of evidence and, an agreed approach towards educational preparation for evidence implementation. In this study, a qualitative phenomenographic approach is used to explore the ways in which nursing opinion leaders understand ‘evidence’ within the context of evidence-based practice (EBP). Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 23 nursing and midwifery opinion leaders across the state of New South Wales, Australia. The findings suggest that views of evidence are deeply imbedded within individual clinical, contextual and professional experiences, and are highly variable. Establishing basic consensus on the meaning of evidence for the nursing and midwifery context is fundamental to the successful educational preparation of nurses and midwives for EBP. It is proposed that future evaluations of EBP education in nursing and midwifery examine the assumptions on which such programs are based as individual variation may be a significant factor in both defining and measuring the success of educational interventions for evidence implementation.

Keywords: Evidence-based practice, Education, Nursing, Midwifery

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PII: S0260-6917(09)00080-X

doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2009.04.006

Nurse Education Today
Volume 29, Issue 8 , Pages 829-834, November 2009

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