What is the best source of information that can be used as evidence in nursing practice *?

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As a nurse, what evidence-informed sources can I use to support my medication practice?

As a nurse, it’s important to use a variety of evidence-informed sources for any medication practice, including administering, prescribing or dispensing.

Examples of evidence-informed sources might include (but are not limited to):

• best practice guidelines, including those from professional associations
• scholarly research
• current nursing texts
• the patient’s broader health care team
• CNO’s practice standards and guidelines
• information resources, such as Health Canada’s MedEffect Canada and the Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada

When determining what sources of information are most appropriate to inform your medication practice, use your clinical judgment to assess the individual care needs of each patient, the appropriateness of the medication practice and the practice environment you are working in.  You must also ensure you have the knowledge, skill and judgment to perform any medication practice safely.

Related links:

• Medication Practice Standard
• Decisions About Procedures and Authorities
• Code of Conduct
• Professional Standards

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Do It Yourself Evidence Based Medicine Reviews

If no official EBM review has been done on your topic, these filters and hedges may be helpful in reducing the amount of literature you need to analyze.

PubMed Filters
From the PubMed homepage, linked above, click on "Clinical Queries" in the left frame. The objective of filtering is to reduce the retrieval of a search in PubMed to articles that report research conducted with specific methodologies.

Top Nursing Databases and Point-of-Care Tools

• Library Search This link opens in a new window

  OHSU online public access catalog of resources. Search here for books, audio visual materials and journals by title. Use the databases in this list to search for journal articles.

• CINAHL This link opens in a new window

  Citations, abstracts and some full text for nursing & allied health journals. Coverage dates back to 1981.

• ClinicalKey for Nursing This link opens in a new window

  ClinicalKey for Nursing is a clinical reference platform that includes content from evidence-based nursing monographs, books, journals, practice guidelines, and core measures with nursing recommendations as well as Procedures Consult and Clinical Skills topics. This resources provides information to support nursing care in areas such as administering medication, managing nurse policy, monitoring for complications, and providing patient education.

• Clinical Skills (Elsevier) This link opens in a new window

  Clinical Skills is an evidence-based database of 1,700+ nursing skills and procedures. The content is updated regularly to reflect changes in practice. The competence-based learning modules support Quality and Safety Education for Nurses competencies.

• Davis' Drug Guide This link opens in a new window

  Davis’s Drug Guide delivers comprehensive and practical information on over 5,000 trade name and generic drugs. This up-to-date resource contains everything you need to provide premium care to patients including information on dosing and administration, safety, interactions, and patient teaching. Contains integrated calculators, including a link directly from a drug monograph to a built-in dosing calculator.
  For mobile access:
  1. Download the free UCentral app from the iTunes Store or Google Play
  2. Access Davis' Drug Guide via the OHSU Library
  3. Click on the Mobile link at the top toolbar of the resulting page. First time users can register for an account. Once you register, you can log in to use mobile or to personalize your web experience.
  4. Using the login information you created when you registered, login to the app on your device.

• Nursing Reference Center Plus This link opens in a new window

  This evidence-based point-of-care resource includes continuously updated information, based on the best available evidence in nursing, allied health, and biomedical literature, written specifically for nurses to help answer clinical questions. Includes multimedia (e.g. videos and images), nursing management topics, care plans, leadership and management continuing education modules, additional skills, and more. It also contains cultural competencies, patient education, drug information, and reference books, guidelines, core measures, legal cases, and research instruments.
  For mobile access:
  NOTE: If you have the Nursing Reference Center app installed on your device, you must uninstall it before installing the Nursing Reference Center Plus app.
  1. Download the free Nursing Reference Center Plus App from the iTunes Store or Google Play.
  2. Access Nursing Reference Center Plus via the OHSU Library.
  3. Click on the NRC Plus Mobile App Access link from Nursing Reference Center Plus at the bottom of the page and enter your email address. An authentication key will be emailed to you.
  4. Open the Nursing Reference Center Plus email from your device.
  Within 24 hours, tap on the link in the email to authenticate the app.
  Note: If the app is not authenticated after 24 hours, you will need to request a new authentication key.

• Global Health This link opens in a new window

  Covers the following aspects of human health and disease: communicable diseases, tropical diseases, parasitic diseases and parasitology, human nutrition, community and public health, as well as medicine and poisonous plants.

• Ovid MEDLINE This link opens in a new window

  Ovid Medline is an interface for searching only Medline content the leading source for biomedical scholarly literature and research.

• PsycINFO This link opens in a new window

  Provides access to abstracts, citations, articles, books and dissertations in the psychological, social and behavioral sciences. Includes all American Psychological Association journals.

• PubMed (MEDLINE) This link opens in a new window

  Provides access to the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on medicine, nursing, dentistry and pre-clinical sciences. Links to full-text articles when available.

• Scopus This link opens in a new window

  Citation and abstract database of peer-reviewed literature that can be used by researchers to determine the impact of specific authors, articles/documents and journals.

• SocINDEX This link opens in a new window

  Database of sociological research. Covers sub-disciplines and related subject areas including social work, substance abuse, social policy, social psychology and related health topics.

EBP Metasearch

Trip Database
A free clinical search engine, designed to allow users to quickly and easily find and use high-quality research evidence to support their practice and/or care.  As well as research evidence Trip also allow clinicians to search across other content types including images, videos, patient information leaflets, educational courses and news. Trip stands for "Translating Research Into Practice".

Finding Guidelines

Evidence-based guidelines are the basis for evidence-based practice. Below are a few tips on how to find current guidelines:

• ECRI Guidelines Trust - ECRI Guidelines Trust® "is a publicly available web-based repository of objective, evidence-based clinical practice guideline content." Access is free, but it requires individual registration. 

• Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) guidelines - "The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ) mission is to produce evidence to make health care safer, higher quality, more accessible, equitable, and affordable, and to work within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and with other partners to make sure that the evidence is understood and used."
• U.S. Preventive Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations - USPSTF "is an independent panel of experts in primary care and prevention that systematically reviews the evidence of effectiveness and develops recommendations for clinical preventive services."
• Professional Organizations such as the American Heart Association, the National Cancer Institute, the American Psychiatric Association or the American Academy of Pediatrics may post relevant evidence based medicine reviews or practice guidelines based on EBP reviews on their Web sites.
• ClinicalKey for Nursing contains full text guidelines published in Elsevier journals only.
• To find guidelines in DynaMed and UpToDate, select a topic, then scroll down in the left column to Guidelines and Resources or Society Guidelines respectively.  
• Find guidelines in Library databases such as PubMed and CINAHL:
  • In PubMed:
    • After conducting a topic search, use the Publication Type filters: Guideline, Practice Guideline, Consensus Development Conference, or Consensus Development Conference NIH
    • Or search for the topic and combine with a search for ("practice guideline"[Publication Type] OR "practice guidelines as topic"[MeSH] OR ("guideline"[Publication Type] OR "guidelines as topic"[MeSH]  OR ("consensus development conference"[Publication Type] OR "consensus development conferences as topic"[MeSH])
  • In CINAHL:
    • Search the topic and click on Edit to the right of the results in search history, then select Practice Guideline as a Publication Type.
    • Or combine your topic search with a search for the CINAHL heading - Practice Guidelines.

Citing guidelines:

• Clinical practice guideline with a group author
• Clinical practice guidelines with individual authors 

Practice Guidelines from Specific Organizations

Finding Systematic Reviews and Evidence Syntheses

Systematic reviews can be found by searching PubMed or CINAHL by using the following strategies:

• In PubMed: 
  • After conducting search on a topic, select Additional Filters, show Article Type Meta-Analysis or Systematic Review, and click on both to narrow down your search.
  • Conduct the search on your topic, then another search using the following strategy:
    "systematic review"[Publication Type] OR "systematic reviews as topic"[MeSH Terms] OR "systematic review"[All Fields] OR "meta analysis"[Publication Type] OR "meta analysis as topic"[MeSH Terms] OR "meta analysis"[All Fields]
    and using AND to combine the two searches. 
• In CINAHL:
  • Conduct the search on your topic, then another search using the following strategy:
    (MH "Meta Analysis") OR "meta analysis" OR (MH "Systematic Review") OR "systematic review" OR (MH "Cochrane Library")
    then combine the two searches using AND. 
  • Search for your topic, then click on Edit to the right of the search results in the Search History. Scroll to Publication Type and select Meta Analysis and Systematic Review. You can select both at the same time by holding down the Control key in Windows or the Command key on the Mac.
• Systematic reviews can also be found by searching for topics directly in the Cochrane Library or in Joanna Briggs Institute journals. 

Calculators

These tools will help you to interpret the clinical and statistical significance of data reported in clinical research.

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What are the source of information for nursing?

Which are examples of the best sources for evidence informed practice?

What are the best sources of the evidence