The Evidence-Based Practice

The Evidence-Based Practice in nursing is the area of concern for this discussion. An evidence-based practice refers to an approach to problem-solving to clinical decision-making in a healthcare organization. The EBP integrates best available scientific evidence that has best available experiential evidence. It helps the nurses in assessing research, clinical guidelines and the other resources in applying the findings to offer a quality care to the patients. Under the Evidence-based practice in nursing, the professionals are entitled to identification of various problems that may be affecting their patients within their line of offering their healthcare to the patients. The possible problem for this case involves how effective is regular hand washing with the regular soap and water vs. alcohol based hand sanitizers in reducing the nosocomial infection (Davies, 2011).

For the nursing practice, the problem is highly significant in that hand hygiene is among the main components of any program of controlling infection and frequently, it is considered to be synonymous with hand washing. However, most of the health care workers do not often wash their hands, and those that comply with this issue rarely exceeds 40% (Babeluk, 2014). In most of the countries, rubbing hands with waterless and alcohol-based rub-in cleanser is mostly use instead of washing the hands. Due to this concern, it is worth assessing the effectiveness of hand washing with regular soap and water versus alcohol-based hand sanitizers in a reduction of nosocomial infection. It is notable that during the daily patient care, rubbing hands with an alcohol-based solution is highly efficient in the reduction of hand contamination than washing hands with the antiseptic soap. In improving compliance with the hand hygiene during patients care, the rubbing of hands with an alcohol-based solution is a suitable substitute for washing hands due to its accessibility and rapid action.

In assessing the problem, the PICOT questions are highly essential. The five most important questions include does washing hands among the health workers reduce the hospital-acquired infections? This is a vital question for assessing the problem. The other important question is what the best practices to reduce the incidences of hospital-acquired infections during the provision of patient care are? Moreover, there is the question of whether the implementation of routine hand washing when offering care to the patients increases the patient's satisfaction and outcome. It is also essential to have a question of how often should a health practitioner wash hands to prevent contamination during the process of handling a patient. The fifth issue involves the role played by nurses to ensure there is no or minimum infection of their patients through hand contamination during their nursing practice. In analyzing these questions for feasibility, I made sure that they all relate to the problem of discussion. It involved that they do not go out of the topic of concern. Moreover, during the framing of the questions, I made sure that they would enhance the continuity and expansion of the main problem. Through examining them, they improve acquisition of more information and knowledge on the main problem. There is also the choice of simple words that are clearly understood.

The preliminary question was how effective is regular hand washing with regular soap and water vs. alcohol based hand sanitizers in a reduction of nosocomial infection. In this question, various variables are relevant to my question. Population/patient is one of the variables that are relevant (DiCenso, 2005). The population addresses the issues of the individuals that are concerned. In this case, the population or patients are the geriatric patients in the hospitals. Intervention is the net variable, and it refers to the available means of preventing this infection. In this case, it is the alcohol-based solutions in the hand hygiene. The comparison is the other essential variable. It compares the possible means to use in reducing the infection. For the case of my question, it is a comparison between routine soap and the water hand washing. The outcome is the other convenient variable. It refers to the expected outcome as a result of using the available alternatives. In my case, my outcome is reduced nosocomial infections. There is also the variable of time. It is the period at which this infection reduction takes place, ie, during hospitalization.

When conducting the literature search for my PICOT question, there are possible keywords that may be used. The logical basis for these selections is that they enhance the conduction of literature search. Some of the keywords boost the conducting of a literature search. Under my literature research, the key terms that are prominent include evidence-based medicine, evidence, nurses, evidence-based practice, and nursing. Moreover, hygiene, infections, controlling, healthcare practices and sanitizers form the list of keywords that are essential in conducting this literature research. The in-depth and critical review and the synthesizing of this literature research reinforce the necessity of consolidating the position of nursing in an evidence-based field. The literature research will confirm that evidence-based nursing may be conceptualized and defined. However, for the nurses to apply and engage in evidence-based processes, they require to be informed what the procedures are and the manner of engaging with them into practice.

References

Babeluk R, Jutz S, Mertlitz S, Matiasek J, Klaus C (2014) Hand Hygiene Evaluation of Three Disinfectant Hand Sanitizers in a Community Setting.

Davies, K. S. (2011). Formulating the evidence based practice question: A review of the frameworks. Evidence Based Library and Information Practice, 6(2), 75“80.

DiCenso, A., Guyatt, G., & Ciliska, D. (2005). Evidence-based nursing: A guide to clinical practice. St Louis, MO: Elsevier Mosby.

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