Transforming Nursing And Health Through Technology

A nurse leader is one who inspire others to work together to achieve a common goal, for instance enhanced patient care or satisfaction. All nurses are called to nurse leadership, however there are different levels of nurse leadership. Nurse leaders are expected to help the organization to fulfill the organization’s mission, vision, values, and strategies to achieve long-range plans. Nurse leaders part take in policy setting, overseeing quality measures are carried out, accountability for overall quality of patient care delivery, staff satisfaction and organizational outcomes. For a nurse leader as a knowledge worker to be productive in an organization, the nurse leader must understand that knowledge work requires continuous learning on the part of the knowledge worker, but equally continuous teaching on the part of the knowledge worker. Having said that, a knowledge worker nurse leader will depend hugely on evidenced based practice to be productive in a healthcare organization. The use of EBP by knowledge worker nurse leader will require learning and teaching. Most healthcare organizations or hospitals rely on evidenced based practice to improve patient care, increase job satisfaction, decrease cost etc. Utilization of EBP can increase job satisfaction thereby decreasing turnover, foster organizational cohesion, improve patient outcomes, and decrease hospital costs (Kim et al., 2016). 5

What is an evidenced based practice and how can EBP help improve the role of nurse leader as a knowledge worker. Stevens (2013) defined EBP as the “integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values” (p.2). Evidence-based practice (EBP) was also defined by Melnyk and Fineout-Overholt (2018) as a life-long problem-solving approach, that is characterized by using the external evidence from the most relevant research, the internal evidence from clinical expertise, and patients’ preferences and values. The intention of EBP is to utilize science and research evidence to standardize healthcare practices to create optimal and predictable health outcomes (Stevens, 2013). Nursing decisions using Evidence Based Practice (EBP) is achieved through the best research available, combined with knowledge, collaboration and clinical guidelines (Farokhzadian, Khajouei and Ahmadian, 2015).