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8.6: Summary

  • Page ID
    8951
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    SUMMARY

    Return to the quote at the beginning of this chapter, rethinking it in terms of everything you have just read.

    Evidence-based practice can only occur if leaders plan for and provide the organizational structures and processes. Success lies in making these structures and processes transparent and part of normal daily business for clinicians.

    —R. P. Newhouse (2007, p. 21)

    Evidence-informed leaders are early adopters who seek out the best available evidence and promote evidence-informed practices among their staff. These leaders provide the structures and the processes necessary to spread the use of evidence and innovation throughout their organizations. Evidence-informed leaders do not only seek out the best available evidence, but they use it to drive their decisions—that is to say, they “walk the talk.” Moreover, evidence-informed leaders promote learning organization cultures of transparency and continuous learning.

    Leaders who ignore the evidence are often the greatest barriers to quality, safe care delivery. As illustrated in the Mid Staffordshire Trust tragedy, there’s more to evidence-informed leadership than having access to evidence or even use of evidence. Sir David Nicholson, the head of the NHS at that time, had access to lots of evidence, but he chose to focus on financial evidence, and the leaders under him focused almost exclusively on financial targets. Leaders influence how others interpret and share evidence, depending on other leadership attributes they possess. As discussed throughout this book, it takes other leadership attributes, such as authenticity, moral integrity, and effective use of power, to make a great leader.

    After completing this chapter, you should now be able to:

    1. Defend the importance of evidence-informed practice to nursing.
    2. Explain how evidence-informed leaders contribute to quality, safe patient care delivery.
    3. Identify barriers to use of evidence within health care organizations.

    Exercises

    Debate the following question with your classmates: When a leader ignores available evidence and allows serious quality or safety breaches to happen under his or her leadership, should he or she be given another chance to lead the organization?

    REFERENCES

    Berry, L., & Curry, P. (2012). Nursing workload and patient care. Ottawa: Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions.

    Berwick, D. (2003). Disseminating innovations in health care. Journal of the American Medical Association, 289(15), 1969–1975.

    Berwick, D. (2013). A promise to learn—a commitment to act. Improving the safety of patients in England. National Advisory Group on the Safety of Patients in England. Retrieved from www.gov.uk/government/upload...ick_Report.pdf

    British Columbia Nurses Union. (2017). Harm reduction position statement. Retrieved from www.bcnu.org/AboutBcnu/Docum...mReduction.pdf

    Canadian Press (2017). Severity of opioid crisis in Canada, U.S. prompted inclusion in joint statement: Goodale. Toronto Star, Feb. 14. Retrieved from www.thestar.com/news/canada/...t-goodale.html

    MacPhee, M. (2014). Valuing patient safety: Responsible workforce design. Ottawa: Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions. Retrieved from nursesunions.ca/wp-content/u...T-May-2014.pdf

    Needleman, J. (2016). The economic case for fundamental nursing care. Nursing Leadership, 29(1), 26–36.

    Newhouse, R. P. (2007). Creating infrastructure supportive of evidence-based nursing practice: Leadership strategies. Worldviews on Evidence-based Nursing, First Quarter,21–29.

    Robbins, J., Garman, A. N., Song, P. H., & McAlearney, A. S. (2012). How high-performance work systems drive health care value: an examination of leading process improvement strategies. Quality Management in Healthcare, 21(3), 188–202.


    This page titled 8.6: Summary is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Maura MacPhee via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.