Evidence-based nursing practice is defined as the “conscientious, explicit and judicious use of theory-driven, research-based information in making decisions about care delivery to individuals or groups of patients and in consideration of individual needs and preferences” (Ingersoll, 2000). Evidence-based nursing, which can also be referred to as evidence-based practice, is a nursing process which involves the incorporation and review of the most credible or reliable and latest research in patient care.
The primary goal of this nursing practice is to give the highest quality and the most cost efficient nursing care available. Since the 1970s, American nurses and physicians have improved and paid attention on evidence-based medicine and evidence-based practices, particularly as medical developments have flourished or thrived at a pace that few professionals keep and preserve. Moreover, American consumers became more knowledgeable with successive increasing expectations that their health care providers would create or develop recommendations using the best available scientific information.
The opinions and intuition of nurses and physicians could no longer be as reliable as the latest systematic review of high quality research. Nursing practice and education have been influenced by the use of research in nursing practice. In the last 30 years, more nurses with masters and doctoral level education entered the work force, the research-based data created by their scientific investigation recognized and approved the essential role that nursing plays in health care.
A study shows that the presence of a nurse researcher increases the focus and efficiency of other nurses in evidence-based practices (Munroe, 2008). The National Center or Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health and American Nurses Association Cabinet on Nursing Research have promoted and provided guidance by focusing research in nursing practice and education issues. A British physician, Archie Cochrane, is related with the movement of education-based medicine.
Archie Cochrane published a book condemning or passing judgment to the medical profession for not giving critiques of research so that the policy makers and other different organizations may possibly make sound decisions about health care. He supported and believed for the utilization of substantial evidence from randomized controlled trials or RCTs that would give or offer more logically valid information than other sources of evidence to develop, maintain, and update systematic clinical reviews of research (Fineout-Overholt, Melnyk and Schultz, 2005).
Archie Cochrane further believed that because health resources are always limited, resources used to deliver services to patients need to be shown to be effective. Form his point of view or personal physician-patient experiences, Cochrane described the problems associated with applying research principles to the field of health care as well as the difficulties of using research trials for individual patient care. To integrate research with medical practice, he advocated use of randomized clinical trials for evaluating treatment methods, and pioneered the use of systematic reviews and meta-analyses in medicine.