What exactly sets evidence based practice apart from any other practice?

This may seem oversimplified, but I'd say EBP is practice that is based on evidence. In contrast, normal nursing practice can be based on any number of things including tradition ("I don't know why. We've just always done it that way."), ritual, untested opinions, anecdote, etc. A classic example of the juxtaposition is how we keep peripheral IV's from clotting.

For years, nurses kept IV's full of heparin when not running a drip to keep the IV from clotting. Then someone thought, "Is this really necessary? Maybe something else would work just as well without the risks of injecting my patients with heparin accidentally.

" So someone did a study and gathered data and that interpreted data indicated that flushing with normal saline worked just as well as heparin to keep IV's functional. That study was replicated enough times that the nursing community decided to change our normal practice because of the new evidence. Our current "normal" nursing practice of maintaining IV's by flushing with normal saline is Evidence-Based.

We do it that way because the EVIDENCE indicates that this is the best way to do it, so we BASE our PRACTICE on the EVIDENCE. Our former normal practice of using heparin was not based on evidence but on someone's idea that this was surely the best or only way to do it. Many of our "normal" nursing practices have been based on tradition, ritual, etc. However, more and more nurses are realizing that we, the bedside nurses, can test our practice by gathering evidence ourselves in the form of Nursing Research or even Quality Improvement projects.

Basing our practice on solid evidence ensures that we are doing the most we can to ensure that our patients get positive outcomes. If this doesn't answer your question, feel free to direct question me or reply to my answer and I can put you in touch with folks who can most assuredly answer you. I'm on the Nursing Research Council at my hospital and we just last week had our 15th annual Nursing Research Conference so I'm chock full of new info & contacts.

:).

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.