Overall Evidence Appraisal and Translation in Healthcare
Every occupation carries multiple challenges that affect both personal and professional sides of an individual. At the same time, occupations may strongly vary in the variety and influence of stressful factors that affect the performance of a worker. Namely, healthcare environment is the area of high responsibility where professionals are expected to be ready to deliver help at any time while on duty. Every medical institution is expected to provide 24/7 care, which requires elaboration of working schedules for the nursing staff. Often, nurses have
to work extra hours and suffer a lack of lunch and rest breaks. This further results in fatigue, which impairs memory, decision-making and the quality of service (Drury, Craigie, Francis, Aoun, & Hegney, 2013). In this
view, the evidence-based practice research has shown the examples of positive changes that can be translated into institutional practices with high-level evidence strength.
Strength of the Evidence
The research articles were estimated according to the Johns Hopkins Nursing Evidence-Based Practice: Evidence Appraisal Tool. Three of the research articles correspond with the Level 1 and two other types of
research correspond with the Level 2 evidence strength. The three studies that have introduced Level 1 evidence relate to psychological, behavioral, organizational and technological interventions that contribute to the
reduction of stress and fatigue due to night-hour shifts and long hours of work. The evidence of these studies is based on interventions with the assessment of control groups. The overall number of individuals that participated in the studies was over 500 nurses and healthcare workers. All studies were conducted within the healthcare environment. The results of the studies were assessed after the implementation of interventions and involved both interviews and performance assessment.
One of the studies (Bazarko, Cate, Azocar, & Kreitzer, 2013) employed a new model of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). The authors of the research measured stress, burnout, health, serenity, self-compassion, and empathy. The study involved standardized questionnaires and assessment techniques, which allowed obtaining consistent results and provide valuable evidence. The internal and external validity of this research is challenged by the fact that it was a non-randomized post-intervention study. However, this study introduced valuable implications for self-regulation under stressful work environment. The rest of the studies that were involved in …
