Sharing your experience
Sharing your experiences can be very helpful in improving practice: sharing knowledge and expertise shares effort.
Group activities
Group activities are useful for making evidence-based practice a routine part of your practice, and the following ideas may be helpful:
- Start a regular discussion session or ‘clinical questions’ group where clinical questions and evidence are presented
- Teaming up with colleagues can be a useful way to maintain the motivation to keep a record of clinical questions and answers and support each other to apply these findings in practice. Starting a journal club is an organised way to review research. Journal clubs provide an opportunity to improve the skills of practitioners in reading and critically evaluating research, and determining its applicability to the practice area
- Share projects within a storage facility such as ‘My projects’ on Ovid databases, or as a CATmaker (Critically Appraised Topic)
- Monitoring the introduction and progress of new initiatives through regular team meetings
- Develop patient information sheets briefly summarising best evidence
Chapter 5 in Evidence-Based Nursing provides guidelines for conducting a Journal club, suggested activities and tips for success. [20]
Maintaining the momentum for introducing and monitoring the use of evidence in practice requires time, patience, and tenacity.
Read the following article about how a group of occupational therapists introduced collaborative learning to increase their confidence to use evidence to challenge practice. [21]
Could you introduce a learning opportunity like this in your workplace?
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