The Impact of Journal Clubs on Intensive Care Nurses' Self-Report of Implementing Evidence into Practice

Evidence-based practice (EBP) has been shown to reduce errors and improve patient outcomes with reductions in morbidity and mortality. Studies have also shown that not all nurses are using the latest evidence in their patient care. The barriers to the use of EBP include deficits in education, using outdated practices, and lack of discrediting of the outdated modes of practice. A quality improvement project was conducted to determine if journal clubs (JC) are a useful method of enhancing nurses’ self-reports of implementation of evidence into practice. Journal clubs were offered to nurses in two intensive care units (ICU). Both ICUs had comparable patient populations, bed capacity, staff age and level of experience. The JCs met once a month for a two-month period. The participants were asked to answer the EBP Implementation Scale (EBPIS) questionnaire before meeting and again two weeks after the club meeting to determine if the participating nurses (N=21) reported applying evidence to practice. The 18-question EBPIS pre- and post-test JC scores were compared. Only three (16.6%) of individual questions’ mean post-test scores showed statistically significant improvement over the pre-test mean scores. However, the mean post-test EBPIS score (32.7) for all participants showed statistically significant (p=0.0029) improvement from the nurses’ total EBPIS mean pre-test score (29.3). The results of this quality improvement project indicate that JCs may be an effective means of increasing ICU nurses’ implementation of EBP.