Advancing evidence-based nursing practice in a children's hospital using competitive awards

When creating an evidence-based practice (EBP) nursing environment became an organizational mandate for the authors' tertiary care pediatric hospital, they assessed the state of EBP at their hospital. Findings revealed inconsistent use of EBP principles by the nursing staff. Nurses routinely cited literature to inform practice guidelines and performance improvement initiatives, but they lacked skills to comprehensively search available literature and critically appraise evidence for its quality. In addition, evaluating practice changes was not universally used. To stimulate the consistent use of the full scope of EBP, we created a call for competitive awards for EBP projects. Three teams (Of eight proposals submitted) each received $5,000 to implement their projects. Teams also received comprehensive education and were assigned EBP experts to help them implement and evaluate their EBP projects. We report the steps taken to implement and evaluate this approach to stimulating nurses' interest in and use of EBP.