Nursing Needs These Times

The priorities for nursing and nursing leadership are, on some levels, fundamentally simple. Nurses are simply tasked with providing the most effective care for their patient populations. This goal becomes much more nuanced when one begins thinking about how to properly achieve this goal. There is a considerable amount of research emerging in recent years surrounding this field which supports the notion that evidence-based practice is one of the efficient ways (Stevens, 2013) to improve patient outcomes. Therefore, in alignment with the chief priority of providing the best care to patients as possible, nurses must also prioritize how to do so utilizing evidence-based measures with a demonstrated efficacy in both clinical and outpatient settings.

However, justifying these two priorities creates an inherent challenge for nursing on a multiplicity of levels including those pertaining to organizations, roles, and individuals. Specifically, the difficulty lies in introducing new evidence-based measures into this profession in a comprehensive means which establishes precedents and warrants conformity on each of the foregoing levels. Without a systematic way of fulfilling this goal, nurses are liable to do their own independent research and implement evidence-based measures autonomously in a way which might not conform to organizational protocol. Worse, they might eschew evidence-based measures altogether (Mulhall, 1998), resulting in a situation in which different nurses are utilizing various measures to provide care in a disjointed, or possibly even dysfunctional, way.

Instead, what is needed is a top down approach in which there are organized means of discerning relevant evidence-based practices and facilitating them in a similarly structured manner. Doing so would improve nursing and patient objectives, while utilizing the most proven methods to accomplish those outcomes.

The disparate implementation of evidence-based nursing practice to healthcare facilities creates some inherent gaps between organizational statements and practices. Most healthcare organizations have mission statements regarding how they are attempting to facilitate the best possible treatment to patients. Nurses are often the focal point of those treatment options, particularly since they are regularly called upon to administer it and work closely with patients to achieve desired outcomes. Without a holistic, systematic way of determining which evidence-based practices are incorporated into healthcare facilitates and how they are to be done so, there are pronounced points of departure between actuating those patient goals and providing a consistent means for doing so.

A basic cognizance of systems theory and systems thinking underscores the aforementioned point. Nurses must integrate a number of different systems to effect proper care concerning environmental factors (Neuman, 1996), individual, patient-centered ones, as well as sanitary and psychological concerns. The complexity of such integration becomes amplified when one considers the different nursing fields which these practitioners must consider these systems for as well. Thus, it is necessary to have a structured approach to incorporating evidence-based practice which is applicable to all of these systems and to the way they relate to nursing statements for specific organizations. Without such an orderly approach to identifying and implementing evidence-based practices, nurses and their organizations are largely unaware of which approaches produce the greatest utility for patients. Therefore, they will not be able to successfully reach organizational objectives for treating patients as well as they could were their some systemic method to utilizing evidence-based practices.

Strengths - The capital strength of this organization is its access to new information in the field of nursing. This is facilitated by a partnership with numerous service, therapeutics, and equipment providers within the healthcare space. This strength is also attributed to a savvy IT systems team with access to medical publications, journals, and sophisticated analytics mechanisms (including text analytics) to parse through such data and reach conclusions which would otherwise require lengthy time periods.

Weaknesses - The chief weakness plaguing this organization is a marked dearth of evidence-based practices. Those employed were established years ago. The organization needs to learn to improve treatment by capitalizing on more recent, evidence-based advances in all of the areas in which it has nurses. As such, nurses are attempting to use evidence-based practices in a desultory manner.

Opportunities - The combination of personnel savvy and IT proficiency presents a prime opportunity for this organization to create a new position: Evidence-Based Practice Manager. The manager can synthesize findings from various journal articles and industry trends to establish -- in a uniform way -- the proper procedures and protocols for implementing them within this particular healthcare organization. This position could be a full time one allowing this organization to capitalize on its strengths and partially overcome its weaknesses. It could produce a great impact on bettering patient outcomes as well.

Threats - The primary threat to this organization is in failing to help patients meet goals as quickly and effectively as organizations which readily incorporate evidence-based practice in a more timely manner. Additionally, the organization could potentially get sued by patients who are not able to meet their goals due to the lack of inclusion of evidence-based measures.