Evidence-Based Practice in Pre-registration Nursing Education: a Comparison of UK and US Clinical and Academic Teaching Staff.

Healthcare policies are increasingly said to be evidence-based, both in the UK and worldwide.
With healthcare scandals recently in the news, it is especially important that health professionals be trained to be effective evidence-based practitioners.
Although a growing body of research explores students’ and newly qualified practitioners’ EBP implementation, little research focusses on the EBP use, attitudes and knowledge/skills of those training them. To explore this issue, differences between the EBP use, attitudes, and knowledge and skills of a convenience sample of UK and US academic and clinical nurse educators (N=81) were examined. Participants completed an online questionnaire which included the Evidence-Based Questionnaire (EBPQ; Upton & Upton, 2006).
No statistically significant differences were identified overall between UK and US nurse educators on EBP use, attitudes or knowledge/skills. A statistically significant difference was identified overall between academic and clinical educators on knowledge/skills (with academic staff reporting greater knowledge/skills), but not use or attitude toward EBP. No statistically significant interaction between country of practice and academic/clinical context on EBP use, attitudes or knowledge/skills was identified. Although most participants felt supported in their roles, themes in the qualitative data pointed to a number of key barriers to EBP.
The results indicate a strong degree of consistency in EBP use, attitudes and knowledge/skills of both UK and US, and academic and clinical educators. However clinical mentors appear to report lower EBP knowledge/skills, suggesting they may need further support in this area. Implications of the findings for policy and practice are discussed.