Making an inventory of best practices recommendations and putting them at nurses' disposal

Gobert, Micheline [UCL] Dardenne, Olivia [UCL] Filion, Nataly [UCL] Van Durme, Thérèse [UCL] Courtens, Annelies [Universiteit Gent] Grymonpré, Dries [Universiteit Gent] Vanderwee, Katrien [Universiteit Gent] Defloor, Tom [Universiteit Gent] et al.[show all]

Introduction: New communication tools – in particular internet – provide access to guidelines. The strength of the evidence supporting specific recommendations and their intellectual independence is not always guaranteed. Lack of time, lack of skills in critical appraisal or understanding of research language or other tools are mainly responsible for the fact that professionals make their own ‘local’ recommendations, only based on experts’ opinions. The aim of this study is to select best practice evidence-based guidelines and to put them at the nurses’ disposal in their own language. Materials and Method: The method was essentially based on literature review of best practice guidelines validated by nurses’ associations (Finland, Ontario, CBO, HAS), the Cochrane Collaboration Library, Medline, CINAHL, BNI. Only the guidelines of the last 7 years has been be explored. Each guideline has been assessed by AGREE, Shaneyfelt, Grilli & Cluzeau tools. Additional criteria have been used to assess the quality of the guidelines. All steps of guidelines selection were performed by two researchers. To put the recommendation at the nurses’ profession disposal a website has been developed. Results: Six main topics have been developed: disorientation, nausea and vomiting, wound care, sedation, diabetes, nutrition. A special attention was focused on geriatric care at hospital. For each topic, four guidelines are selected based on appraisal tools and additional criteria. The website was accessible since July 2009 at the URL address: http://www.sesa.ucl.ac.be/guidelines. According the satisfaction study, all users would recommend the website to a colleague and 9 respondents of 10 found the website very useful. Conclusion: The website is a tool in order to have an access at the evidence based information. This is a first step of a long process. The website was considered very useful by users. But, a next question is the implementation the evidence based guidelines in clinical work. The obstacles and support factors of evidence based guidelines in the geriatric care by nurses must be studied.