The race goes on! May God continue to sustain us all through the finish line. When quitting seems to be my only option, I turn to my family and DNP classmates/friends who continue to provide much needed emotional support. But most of all, I turn to God, my source of inspiration and my reason for this pursuit. I hate to paint a picture of doom to those of you out there. Truly, the DNP journey is one that is beset with rigor, but only because of the far-reaching and all encompassing role that a DNP nurse has in a very complex twenty-first century healthcare system. I may have bouts of hopelessness, but as I always say, I am not a quitter. When under the cloud of unknowing and doubt, I withdraw, reflect, pray, and refocus and I press on with a renewed strength and vigor. I can’t express enough how comforting it is to know that we have very considerate and compassionate faculties who understand the difficulty of juggling family, work, and the academic life.
In NR 725, Application to Practice, we are expected to reflect upon the eight essentials of DNP. I would like to share with you my reflection about Evidence-Based Patient Care because this is a very integral aspect of DNP.
The Institute of Medicine identified the Core Competencies Needed for Health Care Professionals as follows: (1) provide patient-centered care; (2) work in interdisciplinary teams; (3) employ evidence-based practice; (4) apply quality improvement; and (5) utilize informatics (http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10681&page=45). These core competencies and the essentials of DNP education underpin the urgency and cruciality of discovering, integrating, and applying the best evidences to practice.
When I first heard of evidence-based practice, my knowledge was limited to a general notion of it being research findings that when adopted, produce better patient outcomes. I knew it was good, but did not quite understand its implications to my own practice as a frontline nurse until I went back to graduate school. As I continue on in my nursing journey, I realize more how integral evidence-based practice is to the delivery of quality and safe healthcare. As I grow in knowledge, my perspectives begin to take shape as I realized that the components of evidence-based patient-care not only encompass research, intervention, and outcomes, but also the values and perspectives of the patient. As an area most often neglected in considering the best evidences that could improve patient outcomes, this is one of the components of evidence-based practice that I need to pay more attention to.
The DNP education will prepare me to integrate, apply, and evaluate patient-care models that are evidence-based to yield better healthcare outcomes. As a member of the nursing community, I need to establish a collaborative relationship with nurse researchers to advance the knowledge base of the Nursing discipline. As a DNP student, I am only just beginning to appreciate the scholarly work of all nursing colleagues who have sacrificed a great deal for the common cause of improving patient care and advancing the Nursing discipline. My involvement in evidence-based patient care is something to be behooved as a future DNP.
If you were following through my posts, you would have already seen the fighter in me that will never choose to give up. I may be too hard on myself, but I expect nothing less because I have been given much. My success in life will never be defined by recognition and status, but in knowing that I have done my best with what was given to me. It is a risk to explore beyond the boundaries of comfort. But I am, after all, a faithful steward of God’s time and talents, so risk and sacrifice will be constant companions through this journey, along with sweet successes and consolations here and there. So to part, I would like to share with you a quote by Mark Twain as cited Mary Anne Radmacher in her book Life Begins When You Do (2011).
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
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