Evidence Based Nursing in Nigeria: Challenges and the Way Forward

Abstract

Nursing is an art and science by which people are assisted in learning to care for themselves whenever possible and cared for by others when they are unable to meet their own needs. Nursing has evolved from an unstructured method of caring for the ill to a specific profession. lt is therefore imperative that professional nurses imbibe the culture of evidence based practice and bring about changes that will improve the quality of nursing care. This paper briefly highlighted the process and challenges of evidence based practice with a view to educating readers about the subject matter. The challenges among others include, Lack of accessibility of research findings and insufficient new evidence, low level of Education among nurses and Poor organizational support to conduct and use research findings: This article suggested some of the ways these challenges could be addressed and bringing about the development of evidence based practice in nursing in Nigeria. These recommendations among others include; Promoting research mindedness, use of reflective practice, use of critical thinking skills and nursing informatics.