Answer: The term ‘best practice’ is used to describe the most effective nursing care required to address an individual’s specific nursing needs/problems, informed by evidence

Answer: Evidence is the knowledge and information we use to help us to make effective decisions

Answer: Individual clinical expertise, best external evidence, patient values and expectations

Answer: We rely on evidence to deliver best practice. A judgement of trustworthiness needs to take account of the context in which care is being delivered and the professional, moral and ethical considerations that underpin that nursing care. These aspects of the experience should be combined with knowledge of the actual nursing skills being reflected on or observed taken from, for example, clinical guidelines or a manual of nursing procedures.

Answer: Research (or external evidence) is considered to provide the most reliable source of information to answer the clinical questions we generate because it is a systematic and trustworthy way of finding answers to questions.

Answer: Reviews, guidelines or theoretical papers based on research evidence.

Answer: Mixed methods research uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to answer the research question.

Answer: Reflection is a process that assists you to review a personal experience and then learn from it.

Answer: Any three of: develops skills, increases knowledge, makes sense of challenging situations, facilitates review of interactions with others, enables consideration of own and others’ behaviour, improves patient care

Answer: A model of reflection helps you to structure your thinking about what you did that was effective or other people’s good practice and work out how you can translate this into other situations.  They help you to review both your thinking and your actions relating to specific events or experiences.

Answer: Reflection, or reflective practice, enables the reviewing of nursing care by questioning how and why decisions are made and care provided in order to facilitate better clinical practice.  Evidence-based practice ensures that the best evidence is used to make sound and effective decisions.  So it becomes clear that reflection and evidence-based practice are processes that share the same aims.

Answer: A specific question and a systematic search strategy

Answer: Using an academic database of health-related literature

Answer: Search terms, truncation, Boolean operators, subject headings, search limit/edit, save your search, search history

Answer: If a recently published paper is broadly related to the topic under exploration but does not actually help to answer your specific question(s), then it is likely to be less useful as a piece of evidence than an older paper that does.

A research study reported in a high quality, peer-reviewed journal is likely to be a better quality study than one reported in a non-peer reviewed journal.

A piece written by someone who is a key writer or researcher in that field or who uses what you know to be key pieces of evidence to support the arguments presented.

The paper or chapter is supported by appropriate and varied sources of information.

It was published in the last 10 years unless a seminal text or older robust research findings that still inform current practice

Several papers published since the one you are reading have cited it in their reference lists.

Use an appraisal tool for primary research to help you to work through and appraise the quality of different types of published research.