Undergraduate students strengthen evidence-based practice through collaboration with Island Health

by | Mar 17, 2015 | Research & Scholarship

Research and Scholarship Committee, Island Health’s Research Capacity Building Initiative
Professional Practice and Learning, Chief, Professional Practice and Chief Nursing Officer at Island Health

This winter the Research and Scholarship (R&S) Committee successfully ignited undergraduate students’ spirit of inquiry while bringing evidence into practice. The R&S Committee achieved this objective by incorporating real-world issues identified by Island Health into the research assignments of the course Professional Practice VI: Nursing Research.

The undergraduate students, with mentorship provided by faculty members:

• successfully transformed providers’ topics into research questions
• developed a literature search strategy
• identified one relevant paper that used qualitative methods and one paper that used quantitative methods
• prepared a plain English summary of the two retrieved papers

The topics were gleaned and generalized from examples of practice concerns and issues that Island Health’s Professional Practice received over the past three years. Students were able to draw meaningful learning from working through the topics. The topics were real examples of the complex environment that they are
entering in any practice setting. We’re hopeful that by exploring “real” issues that experiences upon entering practice will be more fulsome and less intimidating.

The Research and Scholarship Committee has started discussions with Island Health’s Research Capacity Building Initiative and Island Health’s Professional Practice and Learning about the giving back in relation to the research topics generated by Island Health. We are collaboratively exploring the idea of having a workshop during Island Health’s Knowledge to Action Month based on the assignments completed by the School of Nursing students and the Professional Practice and Learning logs. Yet another example of the R&S Committee strengthening evidence-based practice through strategic collaboration with Island Health.

From the 2015 Spring Communiqué — In Collaboration with Island Health