Leading the way to building a culture of Evidence-Based Practice

The beauty of incorporating Evidence-Based Practice to your culture

Transcript

Choehns 0:11

Welcome back to Leading Nursing Together, where we talk about strategies, mindsets, and innovation that help us shape extraordinary nursing environments. I'm your host, Michelle Hoen, today we are focusing on something that should be woven into every fabric of our leadership, evidence-based practice. We know evidence-based practice changes patient's outcome. But here's the real question for our leaders. Are we creating the environment where evidence-based practice can thrive? As leaders, our influence extends beyond our own practice. We shape the culture in which every nurse works, and the culture determines whether evidence-based practice is seen as extra work or as the way we practice here as a manager. I believed in evidence-based practice. I volunteered for just about every single pilot. My staff engaged in every new thing, collecting data and providing the outcomes for the pilots. It also brought us to closer together. Some of the pilots were successful, while others were not very productive and didn't result in. The outcomes that we hope they would. We still look back on each project though, and provided feedback on our successes or made suggestions for our unsuccessful results. One of the best examples that I can give you about how we tried to use evidence-based practice for our nursing satisfaction. This was a passion for me, for my team. To work together.'cause ultimately, if you work together as a team, your patients will benefit from it. We brought together this little pilot where we used a green, yellow, red magnets to build a program for teamwork. We decided to take our daily schedule and put it on a magnetic board. We placed the names on the board and everyone started off in the green. The idea was, is if someone thought that another person was too busy or starting to get busy, they were to move that green magnet and replace it with a yellow. And then of course if, if it seemed like they were getting even busier and possibly even drowning. Then they should go into the red because this could help with assistance and allowing people to have that visual that there was a need. I started it off and no one was really using it or saying that they were fine and that they didn't need help. We talked about some of the reasons why we weren't using it. Yeah, and what we could do to be more helpful and provide better teamwork. One day I started observing and watching people and determining their levels and asking others to see what they felt like their level was at and what they thought other people's levels were at before we got to the point where we were drowning. It all clicked one day when I observed a nurse running around and never sitting down to chart or even taking a break or asking anyone for help or anyone coming in to help her and realizing that she was starting to drown. I quietly and simply put her in the red, which was something. That we had never really gotten to before. After about five minutes of her being on red, she stopped in front of everyone and said, who put me in the red? I simply looked at her and smiled and said it was me. And she said, but why did you do that? And I explained to her what I had observed, what I was seeing, and then asked her simply, what are some of the simple tasks that we can take off? Of you right now so you can start to get caught up. She realized that there were some PRN medicines that other nurses could take care of for her, and she did have another nurse help her with a direct admit. Within 20 minutes, all of her tasks were caught up and she could start to begin her charting. At this point, I moved her into the yellow. Because I felt like she still wasn't completely 100% back in the green. The amazing thing was, was that now everyone started realizing and watching out for one another. They started to become that team. The team started calculating how much time was being saved when everyone was getting together to help each other out. People were spending more time at the bedside with their patients, making sure that the patients were getting what they needed. When we did an employee survey, we watched our scores go up as well as our retention rate after three months of the project. My team decided to present their findings to their shared governance council, and within three months, the rest of the hospital was using our technique and as a hospital, our patient satisfaction rose and so did our employee engagement in nursing. The data is clear. Organizations that embed evidence-based practice. C, lower patient harm events, higher patient satisfaction, strong nurse engagement and retention, and better financial stewards through reduced complications and length of stay. But those results aren't just an accident. They happen because leaders set the tone, they remove the barriers, and they celebrate the successes. How do you promote evidence-based practice on your unit or across the organization? One. Model curiosity and openness. When leaders visibly engage in evidence asking, what does the research say? This sends a signal that evidence-based practice is valued at all levels. Share articles in meetings, reference guides during huddles, and show your learning right along with your team. Two, provide access to those resources. As we talked about once before, nurses can't use what they can't find. Make sure your team has access to current guidelines, clinical databases, and unit based. Evidence-based champions partner with educators, librarians, or resource councils to streamline access, build protected time for evidence-based practice activities. If evidence-based practices already in addition to regular work, it will never be fully embedded, even 15 to 30 minutes a month for staff. To discuss new evidence or quality projects can shift the culture. This can be done in one of your staff meetings. Just take 15 minutes and talk about some of those new researches out there, and if there's something that they might want to incorporate within your unit, recognize and celebrate the wins. When a nurse implements new evidence-based. Intervention that improves an outcome, tell that story. Share that data. Recognize the nurse publicly. This reinforces that evidence-based isn't abstract. It's about real people with real results. And last, connect the dots to the outcome. Leaders can translate research to impact by showing how a change in practice reduces falls, improves your HCAP scores or cuts, infection rates. This builds the buy-in, in the sense of purpose for evidence-based practice. Another thing that we really have to do as leaders. As address the barriers proactively, we know what the common barriers are. Lack of time, limited access to evidence and resistance to change. Leaders can integrate that evidence-based practice by discussing, how to integrate evidence-based discussions into your existing workflows. Assign unit champions or share governance councils to lead those initiatives.. Provide skill building on how to read and apply research, and create a safe space where questions and ideas can be asked, are welcomed and no idea is dumb. Evidence-based practice isn't just about following best practices, it's about leading with integrity and accountability. When we choose to align our units with the best available evidence, we're saying our patients matter. As leaders. Our role is to keep evidence-based practice visible, valued, and vibrant. Not once a year in an in-service, but as a daily mindset. If you want your team to live and breathe evidence-based practice, it starts with leadership behaviors. That make it possible, model it, resource it, protect time for it, and celebrate every single win that comes from it. Because at the end of the day, evidence-based practice is more than a leadership priority. It's a promise to our patients and to our profession. Thank you. For joining me in this episode of Leading Nursing Together. Until next time, let's keep leading with vision, courage, and the unwavering commitment to evidence that transforms care. I.