Essay Example on Evidence-Based Practice: Enhancing Healthcare Quality and Patient Outcomes

Evidence-based practice is an essential aspect of healthcare that has been essential in improving service delivery to patients. EBP initiatives have also been identified to enhance nursing experiences in delivering patient-centered care and other aspects of nursing. Evidence-based practice has been proven to improve the healthcare experience by; reducing the treatment costs, facilitating the provision of quality care services, patient outcome enhancement, and higher job satisfaction for healthcare service providers (Rycroft-Malone & Bucknall, 2010). In the healthcare setting, the easier the treatment journey is made for the patients, the sooner the organization will benefit, and the more likely the change would be successful.

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Nurses dealing with patients exhibiting aggressive behavior are faced with a significant challenge in preventing the infliction of self-harm and injury as well as maintaining their safety (Stevens, 2013). While measures have been put in place to address aggressive patient behavior, this remains a significant challenge for the nursing personnel that needs to be addressed. This is because aggressive patient behavior may result in the infliction of self-harm and injuries, which could lead to further complications of the treatment process and serve as potential grounds for legal charges for these injuries.

Measures to prevent self-harm injuries infliction by patients exhibiting aggressive behavior should be put in place upon the admission of such a patient. For instance, depending on the nature of the patient's aggressive behavior, the use of controls such as restraints or other methods of immobilization could be applied (Stine, 2020). This is essential in reducing access to self-harm infliction agents, thus ensuring that the patient remains safe and treatment is administered effectively.

Conclusion

I worked in a healthcare facility that was involved in an evidence-based project where the use of restraints was used for patient immobilization upon the determination of the presence of aggressive behavior (Eales, 2020). The controls were left on the patient for up to 5 hours, during which the patent was closely monitored. This helped to identify the patient’s reaction, and upon ascertaining that they were less likely to inflict self-harm on themselves, the restraints were taken off. Using the Change Curve Model would be the best tool to adopt new methods into practice. If changes are needed within an organization, the challenge is not only to get the systems, process, and structures to work correctly, but also to help and support people through these individual transitions, which can sometimes be intensely traumatic, and involve loss of power and prestige (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2019).

References

Melnyk, B. M., & Fineout-Overholt, E. (2019). Evidence-based practice in nursing & healthcare: a guide to best practice (4th ed). Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer.

Stevens, K. (2013). The impact of evidence-based practice in nursing and the next big ideas. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 18(2).

Rycroft-Malone, J., & Bucknall, T. (Eds.). (2010). Models and frameworks for implementing evidence-based practice: linking evidence to action. John Wiley & Sons.

Eales, S. (2020). Restrictive practice: should all nurses be competent in safe holding and restraint?. British Journal of Nursing, 29(3), 170-171.

Stine, E. B. (2020). Effectiveness of De-Escalation Education on Nurses' Confidence and Aggressive Patient Outcomes (Doctoral dissertation, Mount St. Joseph University).