Journal des soins infirmiers et des soins

Euro Nursing 2018: Building Capacity for Evidence-Based Practice: Understanding How Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) Source Knowledge - Leah Adeline Phillips, College of Licensed Practical Nurses of Alberta, Canada

Leah Adeline Phillips ¹ and Melanie Neumeirer²

¹College of Licensed Practical Nurses of Alberta, Canada

²MacEwan University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Statement of the Problem: In Canada, all nurses are required to engage in evidence-based practice (EBP) as an entry-to-practice competency; however, there is little research that examines Licensed Practical Nurses’ (LPNs’) information seeking behaviors or preferred sources of knowledge to conduct EBP. Due to the differences in education and roles of LPNs and Registered Nurses (RNs), it is both necessary and important to gain an understanding of how LPNs utilize evidence in their unique nursing practice. The purpose of this study was to investigate how LPNs source knowledge for their nursing practice.

Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional survey of LPNs from Alberta, Canada asked participants to rank sources of knowledge that inform their practice. Responses were correlated with age and years of practice. Analysis of variance was used to determine if there were significant mean differences between average scores and place of employment.

Results: LPN participants used similar sources of knowledge as RNs. The top source of knowledge for both RNs and LPNs was the information they learn about each individual client and the least utilized sources of knowledge were articles published in nursing, medical, and research journals, tradition, and popular media. This finding is consistent with previous studies on RNs that found nurses do not often access current research evidence to inform their practice.

Conclusions: Since relatively few LPNs access nursing and research journals, it is important to tailor EBP education information to the workplace context. Future avenues of research might explore the potential of using in-services and webinars to disseminate information and skills training on EBP to the LPNs, as this was a popular source of practice knowledge.

Evidence based practice (EBP) is a worldwide development in nursing. In Canada, Registered Nurses (RNs) and Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) or Registered Practical Nurses (RPNs) in Ontario are needed to participate in EBP as a section to-practice competency (Canadian Council for Practical Nurse Regulapinnacles, 2013b; Canadian Council of Registered Nurse Regulators, 2012). EBP is characterized as "a cycle to help clinical dynamic and positive patient results through the integration of the best accessible exploration proof with attendants' knowledge and mastery and individual patient inclinations and values"

Exploration has indicated that medical caretakers by and large have a positive attitude toward EBP yet there stays helpless take-up in the application of this cycle (Yoder et al., 2014). In 2008, Thiel and Ghosh directed a cross-sectional review of 121 practicing attendants in the Midwestern United States to decide how nurses got to data and their preparation to connect with in EBP. Aftereffects of their study demonstrated that 75% of attendants knew about EBP measures, notwithstanding, just 24% utilized a health database, for example, CINAHL, while sourcing data. The majority of respondents (72.5%) demonstrated utilizing their nursing colleagues and friends as an essential wellspring of training information (Thiel and Ghosh, 2008). A comparative report directed in Ireland by O'leary and Mhaolr ́unaigh in 2012 inspected the in-arrangement looking for practices of rehearsing medical caretakers, their results found that most attendants got to others, particularly their colleagues, when looking for data and making decisions on care. In 2014, Yoder et al. studied 1,112 RNs from the United States to decide how and when they use research findings in their training. There were little contrasts founding their investigation. For this situation, just 11% of RNs said they did not know especially about EBP, notwithstanding, when asked about how they access data practically speaking 75% expressed they relied on individual experience as their essential wellspring of knowledge and just 23% noted utilizing nursing research diaries. Additionally, when gotten some information about how they got to nursing information on the web, 71% expressed they utilized Google, while less than half (45%) announced utilizing information bases like CINAHL or MEDLINE (Yoder et al., 2014). One more study of 500 Jordanian nurses demonstrated that in any event, when attendants evaluated their disposition and skills identified with EBP as moderately high, the genuine act of EBP remained low (AbuRuz, Hayeah, Al-Dweik, and Al-Akash, 2017).These outcomes portray a reasonable "hole" between the desires of EBP and the execution of EBP in the RN populace.