Locating Credible Databases and Research.

Competency 1: Interpret findings from scholarly quantitative, qualitative, and outcomes research articles and studies.
Explain why the sources selected should provide the best evidence for the chosen diagnosis.
Competency 2: Analyze the relevance and potential effectiveness of evidence when making a decision.
Describe the best places to complete research and what types of resources one would want to access to find pertinent information for the diagnosis within the context of a specific health care setting.
Competency 4: Plan care based on the best available evidence.
Identify five sources of online information (medical journal databases, websites, hospital policy databases, et cetera) that could be used to locate evidence for a clinical diagnosis.
Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly communication strategies to lead practice changes based on evidence.
Describe communication strategies to encourage nurses to research the diagnosis, as well as strategies to collaborate with the nurses to access resources.
Communicate using writing that is clear, logical, and professional with correct grammar and spelling using current APA style.
PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT
As a baccalaureate-prepared nurse, you will be responsible for providing patient-centered, competent care based on current evidence-based best practices. You will be required to do research, analysis, and dissemination of best evidence to stay abreast of these best practices. Understanding where to go to find credible sources and locate evidence, as well as which search terms to use, is the foundation of incorporation of best practices.
SCENARIO
You are supervising three nurses working on the medical-surgical floor of a local teaching hospital. This hospital is nationally recognized as a leader in education and has a computer lab with an online library where staff has access to medical research databases (that is, CINAHL, PubMed, Medline, and Cochrane library) and online sources of all hospital policies, procedures, and guidelines, and computers at nurse workstations that also have access to these resources. (For this scenario, use the Capella University Library to simulate the hospital’s online library.) You have given the nurses their patient assignments and you have all participated in shift report. A new nurse who just completed orientation and training a week ago approaches you and tells you that one of the assigned patients has a diagnosis he or she is very unfamiliar with. Knowing that patient-centered care based on best practices is imperative to positive patient outcomes, you want to assist this nurse to find research that can be utilized to provide the best care for this patient. Describe how you would communicate with this nurse to encourage him or her to research the diagnosis. Assume you will assist in the quest to locate evidence, then describe where you would go within the facility and what resources you would look for. These resources may include websites, journals, facility policies or guidelines, or any other sources of online information.You may choose the diagnosis for the patient in this scenario. Choose something you would find interesting to research or that applies to a clinical problem you would be interested in addressing. Create a list of at least five sources that could be used to find evidence, with the best source listed first, and explain why the sources you chose are best to find evidence for the diagnosis you chose and the clinical scenario. You are only evaluating the sources of evidence (database, website, policy database or website, et cetera). You are not actually completing a search and selecting evidence. Consider the following examples: a nursing journal in CINAHL may not be the best source of evidence for information on how to administer medications through a central-venous catheter, whereas a hospital policy database found on a website may not be the best source of information on caring for a patient with a rare chromosomal abnormality.