gms | German Medical Science

Background: Commonly recommended strategies to facilitate EBP in educational setting are to educate EBP process and to increase students’ EBP competency through clinical practicum.

Purpose: This study examines the effects of integrating Evidence Based Practice (EBP) into gerontological nursing clinical practicum on nursing students’ access & use of information resource and EBP competency.

Methods: A one-group pretest-posttest design was used. One hundred junior nursing school students from a university participated. Gerontological nursing clinical practicum combined with EBP was 6 full days of clinical practicum in geriatric hospitals with EBP education. Group & individual training on EBP skills, lectures, small group discussion and conferences were provided. Data were analyzed using paired t tests for 100 participants.

Results: The scores of evidence based practice competency increased significantly (p<.001) showing significant improvement in searching and classifying the evidence. Nursing students’ access and use of research evidence was improved (p<.001).

Conclusion: This study showed that the integration of EBP into a clinical practicum was effective to improve accessibility and usefulness to research evidence such as guideline and research article and to increase EBP competency in undergraduate students. Improving students’ knowledge of EBP process and increasing EBP competency would facilitate evidence-based practice in setting. Clinical instructor can create environments conducive to EBP by supporting computerized access to evidence based guideline, supporting time for research utilization efforts for students. This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea(NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2010-0024922)