Definition Evidence Based Practice Evidence-based practice has become the gold standard for nursing care.

EBP allows for quality, individualized, and evidence backed care that provides the optimal patient outcome. There are many levels to evidence based practice and can be defined in multiple ways. Evidence-based practice can be defined as the combination of research findings, clinical experience, expert opinion, and basic science concepts. The uses of these ideas then allow the nurse to make clinical decisions. These concepts are then blended with patients preference, values, and situation to create individualized evidence-based nursing care. This collaborative method involves all members of the healthcare team. This multi step process starts with asking a clinical question and then researching the best evidence to answer the question. Next the nurse analyzes the relevant data, makes a recommendation to improving the practice, implements the recommendation, and evaluates the outcomes. These questions are formatted around PICOT; population, intervention, comparison, outcome, and time. To ensure the best evidence has been found nurses use different tables that give the status of the evidence found. One example is the JBI level of meaningfulness. The levels range from 1 to 4 and in each level the nurse must analyze the facts, bring together findings, and form a conclusion. This hierarchy of evidence levels is 1: research with unequivocal synthesized findings, 2: research with credible synthesized findings, 3: text/opinion with credible findings or one or more single research studies of high quality, and 4:expert opinion. This gives evidence a rank with the highest level of evidence being 1. In the past the healthcare field has relied on tradition and opinion but this way of doing things is no longer acceptable. EBP forces nurses to understand the why behind practices and is used to bridge the gap between research and practice, this allows the nurse to provide optimal

Definition care. Providing care that is evidence based allows for improvements on nursing care and better outcomes. This allows the nurse to implement interventions that are known to work which in return provide better patient outcomes and quality care. The barrier that prevents nurses from using EBP is the time it takes and the amount of time the nurse has. Although it is time consuming, evidence based practice is the gold standard for nursing and provides quality and effective care with desirable outcomes.