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NRS 4026 - Nursing Capstone

Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) Steps

  1. Problem Identification: Converting information needs into an answerable question
  2. Finding the Evidence: Finding, with maximum efficiency, the best evidence with which to answer the question
  3. Critique: Determining the merit, feasibility and utility of evidence
  4. Summarize the Evidence: Combining findings from all evidence to make a practice recommendation
  5. Application to Practice: Incorporating the recommendation into a clinical setting or organization
  6. Evaluation – Determining the effective of the practice over time

Steps in Reviewing the Literature

  • Problem formulation - which topic or field is being examined and what are the component issues?
  • Literature search - finding materials relevant to the subject explored
  • Data evaluation - determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic
  • Analysis and interpretations - discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature


Free downloadable textbook - Literature Reviews for Education and Nursing Graduate Students

Assessing the Quality of the Evidence

EBP pyramid

EBM Pyramid and EBM Page Generator, copyright 2006 Trustees of Dartmouth College and Yale University.

Tools for Conducting a Review

OUWB Medical Library maintains a subscription to a tool -- Covidence -- that helps you manage the literature review by allowing you to import citations, conduct title and abstract screening, full text-screening, and data- extraction. The tool auto-generates data for the PRISMA diagrams of  systematic reviews.

  1. Covidence Signup -- You need to first join the subscription with your OU email.
  2. Covidence Login -- Once you have joined, you can log in to create and conduct reviews.

Video tutorials:

Nursing Librarian

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Mariela Hristova
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Subjects: Nursing