NSB203 Inquiry into Clinical Practice

This assessment asks you to produce an informational poster addressing a patient safety issue, identified from clinical practice placement, drawing upon evidence and using a structured inquiry-based learning approach.

Your ability to define a practice-based practice issue, seek and appraise relevant evidence to address this issue, and synthesise this evidence to establish recommendations for practice will be assessed.

The assessment addresses key components and skills developed during this unit, which relate directly to your ability as future registered nurses to think critically about the patient care you deliver, to identify clinical questions for investigation, and your ability to ensure the care you deliver is based upon sound evidence

To prepare for this assessment, you need to undertake the following steps:

1. Identify a patient safety issue that directly relates to your practice placement area.
2. Clearly define the patient safety issue, structuring this as a clinical question.
3. Decide on your strategy to address the problem and examine the evidence related to your topic. You need to consider:
a. What type of evidence?
b. Which databases you will search to find this evidence?
c. How will you establish the keywords and limits for the searches?
d. How will you manage the evidence you find (for example, the use of referencing software)?
e. How will you decide on the level of evidence for each source or article?
f. How you will decide which papers are of sufficient quality to use in your assignment?

4. Collate, summarise and analyse the evidence – choosing the five papers at the highest level of evidence on which to base your recommendations. Consider any gaps or limitations to the available evidence you found. Use this information and assessment to populate the Literature Matrix.

5. Synthesise the evidence to establish recommendations for practice (creating an evidence ‘bottom line’ statement).

6. Consider how you would approach implementation of the recommendations – for this, you will need to identify potential barriers and strategies to overcome these.

7. Create a A1 size digital poster using Powerpoint that summarises your work, for an audience comprising of health care professionals, communicating the recommendations for patient care that have arisen. Your poster should communicate the following:

a. The title which communicates the patient safety issue under investigation
b. The clinical question: structured using the PICO acronym
c. Details of the search strategy
d. A summary of the evidence found to answer the question, which should clearly identify the study design and level of evidence.
e. Details of the critical appraisal tool used.
f. An explanation of any gaps or limitations to the evidence
g. An evidence ‘bottom line’ statement
h. A table detailing potential barriers to implementation of the recommendations, as well as strategies to overcome these barriers.