Module 4 Evidence Based Practice: Finding the Evidence

Submit by the due date and time listed in your syllabus.

Overview

This assignment will allow you to create an evidence-based practice project that includes the development of a PICO question and follows the initial steps of the Iowa Model.  You will share your findings using an APA formatted paper.

Submitting your assignment

• Save this document to your desktop as a Word document.


• Open the document from your desktop and review the assignment instructions and grading rubric.


• Create a separate Word document for your paper.


• Return to the course and upload your paper and your approved nursing research article to the assignment submission link.  Please note: if you forget to upload your nursing quantitative research article, a 5 point penalty will be applied to your paper.


• Make sure that everything is right before you submit. You only have one chance to submit this assignment, and that attempt is what will be graded. No corrections or resets will be permitted once you submit. This is necessary to ensure that the plagiarism checker works properly.

Grading Rubric

See the grading rubric for the assignment to understand exactly how you will be graded. If there is any discrepancy between these instructions and the rubric, the rubric will be the final authority as to how the assignment will be graded.

Instructions for Completing Your Assignment

• Step one:  Using the topic list from module 2, identify a nursing clinical practice topic that you would like to explore.  

• Step two: Use the PICO(T) question in the final form approved by your instructor or coach. If your question was not approved in module 2, you may continue to dialogue with your coach or instructor up until Wednesday of week 4. If you still have not had a question approved by that time read the instructions for developing a PICO(T) question carefully and be sure to follow them. Coaches and instructors will not advise you regarding PICO(T) questions after Wednesday of week 4.

• Step three:  Search for a nursing quantitative research article that relates to your PICO question using Academic Search Complete, CINHAL, Pubmed, Google Scholar, or any other database that contains nursing research articles.  Please note: you can use the article that you submitted in Module Two to meet this requirement so long as it was approved.
  
  
  
  • The article you will find must meet the following mandatory requirements:
    
    
    
    • It must be based on the approved topic list unless other arrangements were made with your instructor or coach.
    
    
    • It must be from a nursing research journal or have a nurse as an author.
    
    
    • It must be no more than 5 years old from the current publication year.
    
    
    • It must include implications and / or interventions that are applicable to nursing practice.
    
    
    • It may not be a qualitative article, systematic review, meta-synthesis, meta-analysis, meta-summary, integrative review, retrospective study, evidence based practice project, or quality improvement article. For more information on how to recognize these types of article see Grove & Gray (2019) pp. 21-23.
    
    
    • It may not be a clinical information article or “how-to” article.
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

• Step Four: Collecting More Evidence (Do the research)
  
  
  
  • Find a credible scholarly or government resource published within the past 5 years that provides you with at least two facts (ex. costs, morbidity, mortality, safety, or other related statistics) for why your clinical problem is important (provide statistics).  (The internet is a great place to get this information…just don’t forget to cite this information and add it to your reference page).
  
  
  • Find a clinical practice guideline that relates to your question.  It must have information that relates to the role of the nurse.  The guideline must be the most recent version or published within the past five years. (It is true that guidelines are not always updated within 5 years so you will need to discuss this.) There are several websites listed in your textbook that can help with searching for guidelines. The UTA library also has resources for clinical practice guidelines. If the source you use is not actually a clinical practice guideline you will lose a substantial amount of points on your paper.
  
  
  • Find a clinical “how-to” article, a nursing professional practice website, a systematic literature review, a meta-analysis, or some other credible academic resource published within the past 5 years that relates to your practice question.
  
  
  • Hint: Did you notice that you will be finding a total of four different sources of information for your PICO question?  To re-cap, these four sources are:
    
    
    
    • Statistics you are reporting in paragraph one.
    
    
    • Nursing quantitative research article for paragraphs 2, 3, and 4
    
    
    • Clinical Practice Guideline (paragraph 5)
    
    
    • A source of your choosing (paragraph 6)
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

• Step Five: Write up your findings in APA format and submit them to assignment portal by the due date and time listed in your syllabus.  Here’s how to write up your findings:
  
  
  
  • Start with a 7^th edition APA cover page. An example is provided by the instructor. The paper itself (not including cover page and references should be six pages or less)
  
  
  • Paragraph #1: This is your opening paragraph. Start with an introduction statement. What is your PICO question? Describe why was it important (share the dollars, morbidity / mortality, statistics, safety stats you found with citation)? Paragraph #1 does not have a heading. You should put the title of your whole paper in the center in bold font where a heading would go. For the rest of the paragraphs, use the following headings: Summary of Research Article, Major Variables, Strengths and Weaknesses, Practice Guideline, Fourth Resource, Conclusion.
  
  
  • Paragraph #2:  What did your nursing quantitative research article add to your knowledge on this topic?  State the design. Researchers use all sorts of different terms to describe designs, but you should use one of the broad terms mentioned in our textbook (descriptive, correlational, predictive correlational, model testing, experimental, or quasi-experimental). State the sampling method (also using one of the sampling method terms discussed in your textbook), and setting of the study (this should only take one sentence: e.g. “Smith and Johnson conducted a predictive correlational study using a convenience sample from a psychiatric outpatient clinic.”). State the major findings of the study (maximum 3 findings). The findings you share should come from the results or discussion settings and should be relevant to your PICO question and your practice as a nurse.
  
  
  • Paragraph #3. Mention the major research variables in your article. Do not include demographic variables unless they are important to the results of the study. For each major variable, give a conceptual and operational definition (if the authors did not give a conceptual definition you can say “not given”). However, you can always say something about the operational definitions for variables because the authors must discuss the way in which variables are measured. Give the level of measurement for each variable (nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio).
  
  
  
  

• Paragraph #4: Using the skills you have learned in your critique of a research article, describe two strengths or two weaknesses (or one strength and one weakness) that you found as you read this article.  Go back to what you learned in your article critique about sampling methods, measurement methods (ex. questionnaires), and data collection (how did they collect the data to make sure you are being thorough in your assessment. Be specific, so that your instructor, if reading the article, can find them too.  Do not re-state the limitations provided by the authors of your study unless they have to do with the study’s sampling, measurement methods, or data collection.  Do not discuss the research design or the descriptive or inferential statistics used by the authors as a strength or weakness of the study, as this is not related to with the study’s sampling, measurement methods, or data collection.


• Paragraph #5:  What is the name and of the clinical practice guideline that you found?  Give a weblink and an APA citation for the guideline. Share at least three facts that you found within the guideline that are relevant to the PICO question and your practice as a BSN nurse and cite the guideline appropriately. Make sure the source you cite is actually a clinical practice guideline with advice directed toward healthcare professionals.


• Paragraph #6: Identify the fourth resource you found (clinical “how-to” article, a systematic literature review, or a meta-analysis) that relates to your practice question.  Share at least three facts that you found within this source that is relevant to the PICO question and your practice as a nurse, and cite appropriately.


• Paragraph #7 (and #8 if needed): re-state your PICO question and briefly summarize what you have learned through your search. Include information from each of your sources, and be sure to cite them all. Then, give specific recommendations for nursing practice. What would you recommend, if anything, as a change in practice for nurses?  Why?  Remember, this is your closing paragraph(s).


• Note to students about writing up your findings:
  
  
  
  • This is a formal APA paper.  Look at the Rubric for more APA information for this paper.
  
  
  • Your paper must be between four and seven pages (double spaced). Use the following headings for paragraphs 2 through 7: Summary of Research Article, Major Variables, Strengths and Weaknesses, Practice Guideline, Fourth Resource, Conclusion. These headings should all be centered and in bold font. Do not use a heading for the first paragraph. Instead, use the title and center it in bold font.
  
  
  • Don’t use first person language (I, my, we, etc.) and don’t directly address the reader (you need to, etc.).
  
  
  • Turn your paper (as a word document) and article (in pdf format) that you used for paragraphs 2, 3, and 4 in to the assignment submission link in Module Four at the due date and time listed in your syllabus.
  
  
  • Possible points for this assignment: 100 points