The world now has more health researchers than ever before in history. Because of this, many quality health studies are being published virtually every week. These studies provide new ideas, systems, and theories that are helping to improve patient care. Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) nursing research papers are academic writings that help to document how the new studies are helping or can help to improve patient care.
In this post, you will discover everything you need to know about EBP papers, including how to write one from start to finish.
But before proceeding further, let's get solid on what Evidence-Based Practice means in nursing.
Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) in nursing is a field of nursing focusing on helping nurses to learn how to find and adopt patient care strategies, theories, and systems that are based on scientific evidence. It has significantly improved patient care over the last two decades. In evidence-based practice, nurses ask, acquire, appraise, apply, and assess. The five steps of EBP are integral in nursing and medical practice.
Nursing degree programs that include this field in their curriculum produce nurses who know that patient care should almost always be based on evidence from research.
EBP is implemented methodically in actual nursing practice, beginning with assessing the need for change. It is then followed by locating the best evidence from credible, reliable, reputable, and authoritative sources.
The next step entails a systematic review of the evidence using a specific guideline, enabling the synthesis of the gathered evidence. The evaluation aims to ensure that the evidence being considered for adoption or implementation is suitable for use.
Since so many health studies are published weekly, adopting evidence from random studies is insufficient. The evidence must first be reviewed before adoption.
The review results help design change, which leads to implementation and evaluation and, finally, integration and maintenance of the EBP change.
The methodical review of the evidence for adoption in EBP is done through an EBP nursing research paper, aka EBP research paper.
Learn what exactly makes up the structure of a typical EBP research paper in the section below and then how to write a brilliant EBP research paper in the section after the section below.
A good nursing EBP research paper has several vital parts. All the parts must be included for it to be considered complete.
If you have seen or read many EBP research papers, you must have noticed that a typical EBP research paper includes an introduction, methodology, literature review, discussion, and conclusion. These are perhaps the most crucial parts of an EBP paper. Nevertheless, they are not the only ones. Below is a breakdown of the critical parts of a nursing EBP research paper:
The first part of an EBP paper is the title page. Like every other academic paper, an EBP research paper must have a title page, and the title page must be formatted appropriately. Ensuring your title page is formatted correctly is vital so you do not get penalized during grading. Probably the most critical element of your title page is the title itself. The title should be an attention-grabber to make your professor highly interested in your research paper.
When developing a title for your research paper, you should ensure it sets the scope of your EBP research paper. It should also provide a hint at what your thesis statement will be. Moreover, it should also be concise and fine-tuned. A clear, concise title that provides the scope of the paper is more than sufficient for any academic paper.
The introduction of your EBP paper is one of its most critical parts. This is because it introduces the reader to the rest of your paper. Therefore, a good EBP research paper introduction presents background information on the research topic or question.
The best way to provide background information on the research topic or nursing issue is to use the PICO approach. PICO is an acronym for Problem, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome. You can use the PICO approach to organize your introduction as follows:
In addition to organizing your introduction using the PICO approach, as shown above, you must ensure it ends with your thesis statement.
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The second part of your EBP paper is your thesis statement. Every adequately written EBP paper must have a thesis statement. A thesis statement in an EBP paper is its central argument. It is usually the last sentence or statement in the introduction paragraph, and the entire paper is based on it. Only an EBP paper with a good thesis statement can get a top grade. This is because it does not force the reader to read the entire paper to get what it is all about.
A proper thesis statement is specific, argumentative, and manageable. If your thesis statement is not specific, your EBP research paper will be too broad and lose significance. If your thesis is not argumentative, your EBP paper will be too descriptive and not analytic enough to be considered a good research paper. Lastly, completing your EBP paper will be challenging if your thesis statement is not manageable.
At the core of every EBP research paper is the systematic review of recent literature on a particular topic to find information that can help improve a nursing or patient care issue. Because the literature review is a vital element of every nursing EBP paper, it is essential to ensure the literature chosen for review is of the highest quality.
You cannot just go on Google and find random papers or sources to use for your EBP research paper literature review. You must use credible evidence from cohort studies, case-controlled studies, RCTs, peer-reviewed journals, practice papers, white papers, literature reviews, and systematic reviews. And you must get them orderly and systematically in trustworthy databases. How you get them is what is referred to as methodology. Your professor expects to see details about your methodology immediately after your EBP paper introduction.
The most crucial methodology details your professor expects to see include the names of the databases you searched for evidence (sources), the search terms you used, and the inclusion and exclusion criteria. One can use different methodologies to choose evidence for their literature review.
Under methodology, explain the databases you used, including the search terms, total articles yielded, and your inclusion and exclusion criteria. You should consider the credibility, validity, and reliability of each study. You can use qualitative or quantitative studies. Qualitative studies focus on subjective analysis, interviews, and description, while quantitative studies use objective figures that can be measured, calculated, and counted.
The most crucial part of every nursing EBP paper is the literature review. Because it is in the literature review section, you are supposed to analyze and compare the links between the evidence (sources) you have settled on in your methodology.
What is essential in the literature review section is not the evidence used but the associations or analysis of the evidence. As long as the evidence (sources) are gotten using the proper methodology, what matters is how you show the links between the different pieces of evidence you include in your literature review. The best way to show the links between the sources is to show how the sources compare and contrast. Doing this will help you to develop an excellent EBP paper.
After reviewing the evidence you collected, you should create a table to show how different aspects of your pieces of evidence associate in terms of year of publication, sample size, demographics, methodology, limitations, results, and confidence level.
After your EBP literature review section, you will want to discuss your findings or what you've noted in the evidence. A typical discussion will discuss the critical aspects of the different sources used as evidence, including the interventions, the approaches used for implementation, the evaluation strategies, and so on. You should start the discussion by discussing the findings first, followed by a discussion of the change in practice and then a discussion of the efficiency of the change. This should be followed by a discussion of the most appropriate implementation strategy.
The last written part of every EBP research paper is the conclusion. You must professionally conclude your EBP paper. For your conclusion to be professional, it must have a summary of your EBP paper and nicely wrap the whole thing.
After writing your conclusion, you must add a references page that correctly references all the sources you have used in your paper. Without a references page, your EBP research paper will be considered incomplete. Make sure you add the references following the formatting style advised by your professor.
Most EBP research papers usually have an abstract. An abstract is a short (less than 250 words) summary of a scientific paper. It is used to highlight what is contained in the paper.
When given an EBP paper assignment, there are specific steps you need to follow to ensure that the paper you develop is quality and 100 percent complete. Below we will highlight these steps.
The first thing you need to do when given an EBP paper assignment is to pick a topic. Ensure the topic is viable (not too hard to write about). There are different ways to pick a topic for your nursing EBP paper. You can get inspiration from your class notes, assignments, coursework, peer-reviewed sources, etc. You can also search on Google for nursing EBP paper topics to get inspiration for your own paper topic.
As you look at different things for inspiration for your own topic, you should ensure that the topic you come up with is one in which you have great interest. If you do this, it will be evident in your paper that the topic you are writing about is one you are interested in. If you don't, your EBP paper will probably sound dull or flat and won't even excite your reader.
Sometimes, your professor/instructor will give you a topic to focus on. If that is true in your EBP paper assignment, jump to the next step below.
You should ask your professor for confirmation after choosing a nursing topic for your EBP paper. Ask them if your chosen topic is good enough to help you develop a good EBP paper. If they say it is good enough, start collecting evidence for your paper. If they suggest you edit the topic in any way, do it immediately. By asking your professor for confirmation before you start writing your EBP paper, you will write it will so much confidence when they agree it is good enough. Even if they ask you to refine it, you will have a lot of confidence writing it because you will know the refined topic is on the right track.
Sometimes professors ask students to write a research proposal before starting the EBP research paper. If you have been asked to write a research proposal, you will need to write it before you begin researching the paper. To accept your research proposal, you must ensure it clearly highlights the issue you want to solve, the change process, and the basis for change. If your proposal is not good enough, your professor will most likely recommend changes you can implement to improve it.
Once you choose a topic (a problem you want to solve) and your professor confirms it, you should start gathering evidence to support your topic. Good evidence is probably the most essential part of an essay. If your EBP paper does not have good evidence, it is improbable that you will get a top grade when graded. Therefore, it is crucial to do good research to ensure you get credible and trustworthy sources for your EBP paper. Sources should be all the papers that can help you to provide a solution to the problem you want to solve.
Once you have many sources, read through them to find out how to solve the problem. When you have a good idea of how to do this, you should create a proper problem statement and a strong thesis statement. A problem statement describes the problem you want to solve unambiguously, while a thesis statement defines how you will do it. With a thesis statement written, you should evaluate the sources you collected and choose only those that are very credible for your literature review.
The right way to choose sources or find evidence for your EBP nursing paper is to search for your chosen topic in a credible or reliable science database. Examples of credible nursing article databases include The Cochrane Collaboration, CINAHL, OVID, TRIP Database, PubMed, and EBSCO. You can also search for sources in your university's online database. Mark all the sources you believe have information that could help you answer your research question and/or support your thesis statement.
Related reading: Important nursing theories and nursing theorists.
It is crucial to choose sources carefully to ensure you do not mess up. The best sources to use in the literature review section of your EBP paper are those that are credible and verifiable. Do not choose or use any source that is not credible and verifiable to use in your paper.
It is crucial to note that most nursing EBP papers focus on the research and its credibility. This is the reason why they have a methodology section. In the section, you are supposed to explain your inclusion and exclusion criteria. You are supposed to write down the conditions the sources you want to use should meet and the conditions that will disqualify a source.
So make sure you create inclusion and exclusion criteria for your EBP paper at this stage. Then, use these two criteria to identify the most relevant and credible sources for the literature review section of your paper.
You should create an outline after choosing a nursing topic, gathering evidence, and selecting sources. There are many outline templates available online for writing nursing EBP research papers. Download a good template and print it. After printing it, fill it in with all the crucial points you intend to write your paper in the order you intend to write them.
Once you have written them down, make sure they make sense to you from an organizational point of view. If they do, your outline is good to go. Creating an outline is an important thing to do when writing an EBP paper. This is because once you create it, you have to follow it, and you will have all the forward momentum you need to write your paper from the first paragraph to the last. In addition, you won't get stuck because whenever you feel like you are getting stuck, you can refer back to your outline for direction, and just like that, you will know what to write next.
You need to ensure your EBP paper has an interesting title if you want your reader/professor to read it with high interest. If your paper's title is dull or flat, the reader will read it with the same mood from start to finish. In addition to your title being interesting, it should set the scope for your entire paper.
The best EBP paper title is clear, precise, relevant, and fine-tuned. The title of your paper can be a statement, a PICOT statement, a question, or a fact against the status quo. Whatever approach you take, you must ensure it provides good insight into your paper.
The introduction of an EBP paper is one of its most essential elements. This is because it presents background information on the problem plus the solution blueprint. In other words, it tells the reader what the paper is about. The best way to write an EBP paper introduction is to provide background information on the paper's topic. And best way to provide background information on the topic is to use the PICO approach. PICO is an acronym for Problem, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome. You can use the PICO approach to organize your introduction as follows:
In addition to organizing your introduction using the PICO approach shown above, the last statement in your introduction needs to be your thesis statement.
Related Reading: Does a picot question or statement have to be in order?
You can't just go on Google and find random papers or sources to use for your EBP research paper literature review. You must use credible evidence from cohort studies, case-controlled studies, RCTs, peer-reviewed journals, practice papers, white papers, literature reviews, and systematic reviews. And you must get them orderly and systematically in trustworthy databases. How you find credible sources is what is referred to as methodology. Your professor expects to see details about your methodology immediately after your EBP paper introduction.
The most crucial methodology details your professor expects to see include the names of the databases you searched for evidence (sources), the search terms you used, and the inclusion and exclusion criteria. In addition, highlight the methodology you used earlier in step 4.
The analysis of the evidence is essential in the literature review section. As long as the evidence (sources) are gotten using a sound methodology, what matters is how you show the links between the different pieces of evidence you include in your literature review. The best way to show the links between the sources is to show how the sources compare and contrast. Doing this will help you to develop an excellent EBP paper literature review section.
After reviewing the evidence you collected, you should create a table to show how different aspects of your pieces of evidence link in terms of year of publication, sample size, demographics, methodology, limitations, results, and confidence level.
After writing your EBP literature review section, you should discuss your findings. You should start the discussion by examining the findings first, followed by a discussion of the change in practice and then a discussion of the efficiency of the change. This should be followed by a discussion of the most appropriate implementation strategy.
You must professionally conclude your EBP paper. For your conclusion to be professional, it must have a summary of your EBP paper. The right way to write this summary is to start with a restatement of the thesis, followed by a restatement of the main points. The main points should be followed by an overview of the proposed change, its implementation strategy, and the intended benefits.
After writing your conclusion, you must add a references page that correctly references all the sources you have used in your paper. Without a references page, your EBP research paper will be considered incomplete. The references on your references page must be formatted appropriately.
After completing your references page, you should begin editing and proofreading your paper. Your paper will most likely contain typing errors, grammar errors, and so on. You can only make it perfect by proofreading it. The best way to proofread is first to do it using an AI-powered proofreader like Grammarly.com. It will help you to quickly catch and eliminate most of the obvious or basic mistakes in your work.
After proofreading and editing using an AI proofreader, you should do it with your own two eyes and brain. This will help you to catch the errors the computer software might have missed. It will also help you to find and correct sentences and paragraphs in your work that are not clear.
Once you are done editing and proofreading, your paper will be ready for submission.
Also Read: How to formulate an excellent nursing care plan for a nursing school assignment.
Check out the sample EBP topics below for inspiration to develop your own topic.
You can also consider the list of nursing informatics research topics we have developed to help you select the best.
You can include several types of studies in the literature review section of your EBP paper. They include case reports, control studies, and so on. Discover all the important ones below:
There are seven levels of evidence you can use in your literature review. They include:
Using the knowledge, tips, and insights we shared in this article, you should be able to write a nursing EBP research paper effortlessly.
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