Interventions to enhance the use of Evidence Based Decision Making for Quality Care among Nurses: A Systematic Review

Decision-making is the cognitive process that results in the selection of a course of action from several possible alternative options. The complexity of nurses' decisions requires a broad knowledge base and access to reliable sources of information; as well as a supportive working environment therefore requiring that decision making be evidence based with robust knowledge translation platforms to disseminate the evidence. This review aimed to assess interventions for enhancing the use of evidence-based decision making for quality care among nurses.

This study followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis review (PRISMA 2020) checklist. This study protocol was registered with PROSPERO number CRD42021262318.

The search revealed a total of 143 papers divided as follows: PubMed- 65 papers, CINAHL 25 papers and Cochrane 53 papers. In addition, references of included studies were scanned manually for potential papers and another 46 papers extracted. A total of 133 papers were chosen for detailed extraction following removal of 10 duplicate studies.

Results of this review revealed that the interventions that have been used to enhance the use of evidence for decision making are majorly educational. A few interventions have taken the form of modelling, guidelines and programming. Online solutions have also been seen to enhance the use of evidence for clinical practice of nurses.