NURS 4030 Assessment 2 Instructions Determining The Credibility Of Evidence And Resources

Develop a 2-4-page scholarly paper in which you describe a quality or safety issue, or a chosen diagnosis, and then identify and analyze credible evidence that could be used as the basis for applying EBP to the issue.

The goal of using evidence-based research findings is to enhance safety and quality of patient care and ensure optimal outcomes are achieved. It is not uncommon to hear a nurse say, “why change it as we’ve always done it this way.” However, this is no longer acceptable in today’s practice environment.

The profession of nursing has evolved, and the expectation is that the professional nurse has a scientific foundation to support the care that is provided. As the profession of nursing continues to evolve and engage in health care transformation, baccalaureate-prepared nurses are expanding taking on leadership roles that include incorporating EBPs To be able to do this, the nurse needs to understand the criteria and make a resource credible, as this is crucial when deciding if the research is valid and reliable for implementation into health care settings.

It would be an excellent choice to complete the Villa Health Determining the Credibility of Evidence activity prior to developing the report. The activity is a media simulation that offers an opportunity to review a scenario and work on determining the credibility of presented evidence.

These skills will be necessary to complete Assessment 2 successfully. This media simulation is one potential source of context on which to base your assessment submission. This will take just a few minutes of your time and is not graded.

Demonstration Of Proficiency

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the course competencies through the following assessment scoring guide criteria:

Competency 2: Analyze the relevance and potential effectiveness of evidence when making a decision.

  • Explain criteria that should be considered when determining credibility of resources such as journal articles and websites.
  • Analyze the credibility and relevance of evidence and resources within the context of a quality or safety issue, or a chosen diagnosis.

Competency 3: Apply an evidence-based practice model to address a practice issue.

  • Explain the importance of incorporating credible evidence into an EBP model used to address a quality or safety issue, or a chosen diagnosis.

Competency 4: Plan care based on the best available evidence.

  • Describe a quality or safety issue, or a chosen diagnosis, that could benefit from an evidence-based approach.

Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly communication strategies to lead practice changes based on evidence.

  • Communicate using writing that is clear, logical, and professional with correct grammar and spelling using current APA style.

Professional Context

As a baccalaureate-prepared nurse, you will be responsible for locating and identifying credible and scholarly resources to incorporate the best available evidence for the purposes of enhancing clinical reasoning and judgment skills. When reliable and relevant evidence-based findings are utilized, patients, health care systems, and nursing practice outcomes are positively impacted.

Scenario

For this assessment, you may choose from the following options as the context for the quality or safety issue or chosen diagnosis for researching and completing this assessment:

  • The specific diagnosis you identified in your previous assessment.
  • The simulation Vila Health: Determining the Credibility of Evidence.

A personal practice experience in which a sentinel event occurred. The purpose of this analysis is to better understand what constitutes credibility of journal articles as well as websites. The role of the baccalaureate-prepared nurse in incorporating evidence-based research continues to grow in clinical practice. 

As quality improvement (QI) measures to reduce safety risks continue to be emphasized, the need for evidence-based models and evidence-based templates is growing.

This type of systematic approach to incorporating evidence-based findings allows nurses to make clinical and operational decisions based upon the best available evidence. When the most up-to-date evidence-based findings are utilized, patient-centered care improves outcomes and enhances the patient experience.

For this:

  • Explain the criteria that should be used when determining the credibility of journal articles as well as websites.
  • Support your explanations with references to the literature or research articles that describe criteria that should be used to determine credibility.
  • Your identification and determination of credibility should be done within the context of your chosen scenario for this assessment. 

For example, if you choose to use the provided Vila Health scenario, your initial identification of resources should be of resources that will best help address the presented issue. However, if you are locating resources to help provide evidence-based care for the diagnosis you identified in the first assessment, you may want to begin your literature and evidence search from the databases that identified. 

Any of the three scenario options are acceptable. So, pick the one that most interests you. Be sure to address the following in this which correspond to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Please study the scoring guide carefully so that you will know what is needed for a distinguished score.

  • Describe a quality or safety issue, or a chosen diagnosis, that could benefit from an evidence-based approach.
  • Explain criteria that should be considered when determining credibility of resources such as journal articles and websites.
  • Analyze the credibility and relevance of evidence and resources within the context of a quality or safety issue, or a chosen diagnosis.
  • This is where you are selecting the specific resources to help address the issue in your chosen scenario.
  • Explain the importance of incorporating credible evidence into an EBP model used to address a quality or safety issue, or a chosen diagnosis.
  • Communicate using writing that is clear, logical, and professional with correct grammar and spelling using current APA style.

Determining The Credibility Of Evidence And Resources Sample Paper

The third step of evidence-based practice involves critical appraisal of the sources of the evidence. This ensures their worthiness for application in practice. This worthiness can alternatively be assessed by assessing the credibility of these sources. The credibility of the evidence sources implies that the evidence can be related well to reality and that the truth in the findings can be demonstrated. In the previous step, a diagnosis of acute pneumonia was selected for evidence-based search on the diagnosis process. In this paper, the credibility of the sources that would be assembled will be elaborated and the criteria explained.

Description of the Diagnosis

The new nurse had difficulty in the process of coming up with a diagnosis in a patient with acute chest pain and productive cough. The guidelines for making clinical diagnoses have been improved with time and vary with the setting of clinical practice. The new nurse would benefit from evidence-based practice to establish the best criterion to apply in the diagnostic process. Four databases were identified for the literature search: PubMed, Cochrane Library, google scholar, CINAHL, and PsycINFO.

Literature Search

The literature search was done using the entry of key terms which included ‘pneumonia diagnosis’, ‘pneumonia guidelines’, and ‘pneumonia protocols.’ The search was enhanced by the use of Boolean operators that included ‘OR’ and “AND” to include the relevant search returns. Filters were also applied to improve the relevance of the articles. The search results were filtered based on the publication dates where only articles published in the past five years were returned. Five articles were selected from the returned search results. The selection was based on the relevance of their topics to the issue, diagnosis of pneumonia.

Credibility Strategies and Criteria

The selected five sources were Doubravská et al., 2018; Grief & Loza, 2018; Jain et al., 2021; Perez et al., 2017; and Peterson, 2020. These in-text citations have their full reference provided in the references section of this paper. Various factors were used to assess the credibility of these sources

By the fact that the resources were retrieved from renowned databases mentioned earlier, assumptions were made that they had been peer-reviewed before publication thus credible per the peer reviewers. PubMed and other databases aforementioned are reputable journals that provide scholarly and peer-reviewed journal articles (Cooper et al., 2018). The structure of the resources assured their credibility. There were other criteria such as relevance, authority, and timeliness that were considered in the assessment of the credibility of these sources.

The search ensured that articles published in the past five years were selected for providing the evidence for making the diagnosis. This ensured timeliness in the evidence quality. The practice is dynamic and thus the older evidence may not be the best for application into practice. The authority of the evidence is determined by the authors or the publishers of the evidence. Individuals or organizations that have the authority to speak or write on a given subject are best placed to provide the best authoritative evidence in that field.

In this search, the authors’ information was checked before their selection for use. Most of the authors for the five resources were authored or published by nurses or medical specialists in their respective subfields of medical practice. This made the evidence that would be retrieved from these resources more authoritative thus credible (Sbaffi & Rowley, 2017). The contents of the evidence were cross-checked for structure and language that could distinguish from mere blogs that are usually considered less credible (König & Jucks, 2020). The language and content were professional in these resources

Importance of Incorporating Credible Evidence into an EBP Model

Credible evidence is trustable and can be applied without doubt into clinical practice. In this context, the nurse wants to make the diagnosis of a patient who probably has pneumonia. However, she does not have the necessary EBP acumen to obtain the necessary evidence. In the absence of credible sources, she may end up choosing other differential diagnoses as the primary clinical impressions.

Incorporating credible evidence into evidence-based practice greatly influences health care decisions and outcomes (Sillence et al., 2019). These are mainly seen in patient safety and quality of care. Making the best diagnosis is safer for the patient because the necessary care is provided in time the risk of development of complications of progression of the illness is reduced or halted in the best-case scenarios.

Conclusion

Making accurate and timely diagnoses promotes patient care safety and efficiency. In the case scenario, the nurse sought the next guideline that is evidence-based and current. The process incorporated the EBP model that started with the identification of the topic, diagnosis of pneumonia. Sources of the evidence were identified and included major nursing and health-related databases.

The literature search was done and various items were used to ascertain the credibility of these sources. Timeliness, authority, and relevance were the main criteria for determining the credibility of the sources. The resources were younger than five years, published by nurses or specialists in their respective fields, and maintained topical relevance to their topics. Therefore, all were considered credible.

References:

  • Cooper, C., Booth, A., Varley-Campbell, J., Britten, N., & Garside, R. (2018). Defining the process to literature searching in systematic reviews: a literature review of guidance and supporting studies. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 18(1), 85. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-018-0545-3
  • König, L., & Jucks, R. (2020). Effects of positive language and profession on trustworthiness and credibility in online health advice: Experimental study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(3), e16685. https://doi.org/10.2196/16685
  • Sbaffi, L., & Rowley, J. (2017). Trust and credibility in Web-based health information: A review and agenda for future research. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 19(6), e218. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.7579
  • Sillence, E., Blythe, J. M., Briggs, P., & Moss, M. (2019). A revised model of trust in internet-based health information and advice: Cross-sectional questionnaire study.