By Sue De Pasquale
Encouraged by the success of a new evidence-based practice model developed by Hopkins nurses, the School of Nursing’s Kathleen White, PhD, RN, CNAA, BC, and Robin Newhouse, PhD, RN, CNOR, CNA, took the model “on the road”—to Eastern Shore Hospital Center, a small rural state hospital.
The model (featured last issue in “The Evidence Is In,” page 16) is aimed at ensuring that the latest research findings and best practices are quickly and appropriately incorporated into patient care. It incorporates a three-step process called PET—Practice question, Evidence, and Translation.
White and Newhouse first met with the rural hospital’s nursing director Judy Meyers to identify an appropriate “practice question.” The hospital had been dealing with occasional violence on the part of their psychiatric patients, so the question was framed: “For patients assessed with a propensity for a violent episode, what nursing strategies should be implemented to decrease the likelihood of violence?”
The Hopkins team spent two days with nurses at the hospital, training them in using the tools of the PET process. White, Newhouse, and Meyers guided the nurses in “developing skills to appraise the strength and quality of evidence; identifying gaps; and summarizing the evidence to make recommendations for next steps,” White reported in the May 2005 issue of the online journal Excellence in Nursing Knowledge.
Based on the evidence they found, the group made a variety of recommendations, including a call for improved education for staff nurses about the parameters for violence assessment and the preventive/proactive interventions that are possible.
“Since the conclusion of the project,” White notes, “the nursing group has used the evidence to improve assessments and have had a decrease in staff assaults by patients and increased communication among staff members through their work group.”
