Center for Evidence Based Practice enacting positive changes in healthcare

Evidence Based Practice Fellows 2009-10 Graduating Class

Fort Worth, Texas

9/29/2010

It takes an average of 17 years for healthcare research advances to be put into practice. But at Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth, The Center for Evidence Based Practice and Research (CEBPR) is working to change that.

Evidence based practice refers to the use of the most up-to-date research to improve healthcare practices to give patients the best care possible. Dr. Susan Weeks, associate dean of TCU’s Harris College of Nursing & Health Sciences and director of CEBPR, hopes to support the Center’s “clinical partners as they attempt to infuse evidence based practice in their practice settings.”

The CEBPR partners with the Joanna Briggs Institute of The University of Adelaide in Australia, and is only the fourth university in the United States to be offered this opportunity. Through this partnership, CEBPR hopes to bring research advances to healthcare agencies around the country by providing collaborative learning and top-of-the-line evidence based practice tools to its faculty and students. TCU’s CEBPR partners with more than 30 hospitals to implement these changes.

The Center’s success stories include doctoral students developing a protocol for infusing life-saving lipids into patients who experience a specific anesthetic toxicity when normal resuscitation doesn’t work, and developing a standardized and simple procedure for preventing mouth infections, a common side effect of cancer treatment. All of these have been a result of the work done by students and faculty affiliated with the TCU Center.

The Center has both faculty and students who work with it. “All the individuals affiliated with the Center have dual roles, meaning they are engaged in professional activities in addition to their role with the Center,” says Weeks.

“The bottom-line goal for evidence based practice is to improve the quality of healthcare that is delivered and to improve patient outcomes,” says Weeks. “Specifically, we would like to see fewer patients dying or being harmed as a result of healthcare errors, omissions, hospital-acquired infections, etc.”

“It is important for hospitals to have people who focus on evidence based practice because the time gap between research results and practice improvement is just too long,” says Weeks.

In addition to the work being done by TCU students and faculty, the CEBPR hosts a year-long evidence based practice fellowship for nurses from area healthcare agencies. On September 22, the CEBPR celebrated the graduation of the 2009-2010 Evidence-Based Practice Fellows, which also marked the beginning of the 2010-2011 Fellowship. While in the fellowship, nurses engage in the process of evidence based practice and present findings on best practices for treatments for illnesses, ranging from congestive heart failure to sleep disorders.

“I am very proud of the graduates of our EBP Fellowship and the changes they are creating in their own organizations, as well as their own professional growth,” said Weeks.

“The EBP Fellows learn how to create changes based on sound evidence within their own organization. They implement a project during the Fellowship and are able to use the skills they learn from that project to enact future change. “

Weeks feels that nurses play a big role in advancements in healthcare. “Nurses are natural liaisons for this work because they are experts at introducing change.”