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Asking answerable questions

Nurses have had to deal with many changes in recent years, one of which is the increased expectation that they will keep their practice up to date by reading vast numbers of publications. This expectation and the pressures of maintaining continuing education requirements come alongside ever increasing workloads and diminishing study time.

So what can be done to ease some of the pressure? Evidence-based nursing (EBN) offers at least some of the answers. In a nutshell, the aim of EBN is to make it easier to include current best evidence from research in clinical and healthcare decisions.

EBN is a 5 stage process:





The purpose of this paper is to work through stage 1: the formulation of structured, focused questions.

The types of information needs that arise regularly from our clinical practice are those questions such as Why do we do it this way? or What's the best way of ....? for which neither you nor your colleagues have a ready answer. If you are able to go to the library, what strategies can you use to find answers to this type of question efficiently? How do you find good quality, relevant research without wading through hundreds of papers?

Framing the question in a way which lends itself to searching while still reflecting the specific patient or service focus is an important stage to get right. That way, when you begin …