The Effect of RN Educational Levels on Perceived Barriers to Evidence-Based Practice

                                  The Effect of RN Undergraduate Educational Levels on Perceived Barriers to

                                                                                  Evidence-Based Practice

                                                                                      Purpose/Aim

             The purpose of this study is to ascertain if there is a difference in the perceptions of barriers to evidence-based practice (EBP) between those nurses from an associate degree nursing (ADN) versus a baccalaureate degree nursing (BSN) program.  This study will be conducted in order to fill a gap in the literature.

                                                                             Rationale/Background

             Currently, 49% of the nursing staff in the ambulatory clinic areas are ADN prepared and 42% have a BSN, thus affecting the willingness to look for and utilize the most current best practice is not always deemed a priority (University of New Mexico, 2014).  Moreover, the ADN programs have just recently begun to incorporate EBP into their curricula, due to the IOM (2003) mandates and those from the QSEN initiative in 2007 (Barnsteiner et al., 2012; Greiner & Knebel, 2003; Jones, 2013).  This compounded with a shortened educational timeframe has an impact on the utilization of EBP (Haverkamp & Ball, 2013). 

             There have been a number of studies performed looking at the barriers to utilization of EBP (Brown et al., 2010; Buhaid et al., 2014; Chan et al., 2011; Chen et al.2013; Eizenberg, 2011; Kocoman et al., 2010; Solomon & Spross, 2011; Stichler et al., 2011; Tan et al., 2012).   but none that specifically explore the barriers perceived by ambulatory care nurses in the United States.  In the ambulatory care setting the nurses face a number of problems and constraints specific to their specialty such as:  the location of the clinic (they may be located away from the main hospital), there may be only one nurse to a clinic, and there may be no one in the clinic to provide mentoring.  Nurses in ambulatory care clinics are more isolated than their inpatient counterparts.   Most often they do not have the same resources that are provided to their inpatient peers such as: unit based educators, research mentors, research council, and a research nurse leader.                                                                         

                                                                                       Methods

            This project will utilize a quantitative methodology, with a non-experimental cross-sectional design.  Furthermore, this project will utilize data from a large urban academic medical center in the southwest United States (US).  A convenience sample of ambulatory care nurses in the various clinical settings (primary care, medicine, and specialty care) will be utilized.  The BARRIERS Scale (Funk et al., 1991) and a demographic questionnaire will be distributed to 254 ambulatory clinic nurses; this is the entire sample of ambulatory clinic nurses in this academic healthcare system (University of New Mexico Nursing Portfolio, 2014). 

                                                                                     Outcomes

             The author is currently awaiting IRB approval.  The electronic survey and demographic questionnaire will be deployed as soon as IRB approval is obtained.  Data will be analyzed utilizing descriptive statistics, independent t-tests, chi-square goodness-of-fit and logistic regression. 

                                                                                   Conclusions

              Due to the educational and curricular differences between ADN and BSN programs potentially the perceived barriers to EBP would be dissimilar for each discipline, and thus would require different interventions.