Report of the Webinar on Evidence Based Practice in Nursing

A three-day webinar on evidence-based practice in nursing was organized by department of child health nursing, Manipal College of Nursing (MCON), MAHE, Manipal from October 29th to 31st 2020. The objective of the webinar was to create awareness about evidence-based practice in nursing. The webinar was attended by 26 participants from different institutions in India and abroad.

Day 1: The day's event began with the inauguration of the webinar. Dr Baby S Nayak, Professor and Head, Department of Child Health Nursing, MCON, MAHE, Manipal, welcomed the participants and introduced the Chief Guest. The webinar was formally inaugurated by Dr Josline Mariet, Principal and Professor, Koyili College of Nursing, Kannur, Kerala, who addressed the participants regarding the importance of EBP and its current need. She informed that nurse practitioners in the earlier decades were not trained regarding new practice and based their practice on their previous experience. The nurse researchers are currently encouraged to implement interventions based on scientific evidence which have shown improvement in patient care. She also focused on the importance of scientific steps involved in EBP in nursing and emphasized that all nurse researchers should take EBP as a challenge while practicing in clinical settings.

Dr Anice George, Dean, MCON, MAHE, Manipal addressed the participants regarding the importance of evidence based practice in the clinical area to deliver scientific care to the patients. She also emphasized that communication and care given to the patients need to be based on evidence and should follow the safety principles. She emphasized that this webinar would sensitize the nurses to work hard, explore more in order to reach more people and deliver this knowledge among other nurse researchers to contribute to evidence practice in the clinical settings. Dr Mamatha S Pai, Professor, department of child health nursing, MCON, MAHE, Manipal, concluded the inaugural programme by proposing the vote of thanks.

Dr Mamatha S Pai discussed about EBP in Nursing and Medicine, its importance, levels of evidence, clinical questions for searching evidence, the impact of evidence for change in practice, factors influencing translation of evidence to policy recommendations and steps of EBP. She also discussed the importance of EBP in the clinical area while caring for patients.

Mrs Anupama DS, PhD Research Scholar of MCON discussed PICO as the method of framing a systematic review question and the components of PICO questions with examples. She also emphasized on the advantages and limitations of framing a systematic review question. During the session, participants were actively engaged in framing a relevant question and PICO.

Dr Baby S Nayak emphasised the need of searching for evidence and discussed about the sources and databases including pre-appraised evidence, journals, and other non-bibliographic databases. She stressed on the strategies to design searches and the importance of best evidence in developing the guidelines. She also demonstrated the method of conducting the search on different databases as a group activity. Ms Edlin Glane Mathias, PhD Research Scholar moderated the days program.

Day 2 - The Day 2 of the webinar on EBP in nursing started on a fresh note with the moderator Ms Sunitha Solomon Nagelli, PhD Research Scholar of MCON. There was a short recap of the previous days’ sessions and an introduction to the sessions for day 2.

The first session of the day, Appraising the Evidence, was delivered by Dr. Baby S Nayak. She stressed on the fact that appraisal for evidence for quality is necessary for practitioners to select the best practice available from the literature. She gave a clear explanation of the specific process to appraise the evidence from the sources. It was interesting to understand the fine print instructions regarding preparing the matrix or evidence table for the analysis and follow the steps and tools to evaluate the evidence.

The second and third sessions of the day were on integrating and evaluating EBP taken up by Dr. Judith A Noronha, Associate Dean & Professor, department of OBG Nursing, MCON, MAHE, Manipal. She expounded on the approaches to integrating the evidence in nursing care practice for better EBP in nursing and detailed the methods of evaluation of EBP for better evidence based practice in nursing. It was enlightening to understand the need and importance in integrating the utilization of evidence into practice to bring about change in Nursing Care. It was also informative and educative to know the various clinical practice guidelines that can be used.

In the final session of the day, Dr. Judith detailed the methods of Evaluation of EBP. It was enlightening to refresh the checklists and to become familiar with the guidelines for grading the strength of the evidence. The considerations to take note of for evaluation of the evidence introduced were a prominent way to find the right path for making good judgements and putting the evidence into practice.

The questions and doubts of the participants were taken up by the respective resource persons at the end of each session.

Day 3 - The Day 3 of the webinar on EBP in nursing was moderated by. Mr N. Siva, PhD Research Scholar of MCON. Mrs Shalini G Nayak, Assistant Professor, department of medical surgical nursing, MCON, Manipal stressed on the comparison between factors of evidence-based practice and research, the interrelation between EBP and Research and detailed about preparing the research manuscript.

Mrs Sherin Peter, Principal, College of Nursing, Guru Education Trust, Kuttapuzha, Thiruvalla, Kerala explained regarding the evidence-based guidelines on Foley catheter care. 

Mr Vitobha N Mhalkar, Assistant Professor, Department of Mental Health Nursing, Institute of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour, Goa, explained about making EBP happen in real practice and explained the importance, opportunities, and challenges in implementing EBP in nursing practice. 

Mrs Chaitali Biswas, Professor and Principal, Tata Medical Centre, Kolkata, W. Bengal, discussed the development of EBP guidelines for oral hygiene in cancer patients.

Mrs Nisha Laila, Nursing Officer, Paediatric Cardiology, AIIMS, New Delhi, explained the development of EBP guidelines for tracheostomy care for children. The questions and doubts of the participants were taken up by the respective resource persons at the end of each session. Dr Mamatha S Pai, the Convenor of the webinar presented the concluding remarks and ended the three-day webinar.