Strategies for overcoming barriers in implementing evidence-based practice.

In summary, there are a variety of strategies that can be used to overcome barriers to implementing EBP in nursing. However, these strategies must be formally evaluated to determine their effects on changing nurses' knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes about EBP as well as their effects on changes in practice. For evidence-based care to evolve more quickly in nursing, individuals and systems must make a commitment to advancing EBP and allocating resources for this purpose. Basic and graduate nursing programs must begin to teach the value and foundations of EBP if nursing is to create a culture where EBP is the "norm" and not the rarity. Since research has found that health care professionals find practice more rewarding when engaging in EBP (Dawes, 1996), this movement could help to facilitate the retention of nurses in a time when the nursing profession is facing severe shortages. Finally, since there are numerous areas in which evidence does not exist to support current nursing practices, researchers and APNs need to unite in order to design and conduct studies to answer high-priority compelling clinical questions.