COLUMBUS – Ohio State University’s College of Nursing hopes to use a $6.5 million private grant to help steer the profession away from conventional wisdom and toward care that’s based on the latest research and evidence.
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The grant from the Helene Fuld Health Trust will be used to establish a national center for education of nurses, focused on teaching best practices and evidence-based practice. The center will be called the Helene Fuld Health Trust National Institute for Evidence-Based Practice in Nursing & Healthcare. It will debut this fall with a summit of nursing education leaders.
Americans might be surprised to know how seldom the most recent research is reflected in the care that patients receive, said Bernadette Melnyk, dean of OSU’s College of Nursing. Ohio State recently surveyed 257 chief nurses around the country and found that about half said that evidence-based practice was employed somewhere between “not at all” and “somewhat.”
“Unfortunately, many care decisions are instead based on the ‘because we’ve always done it that way’ model,” Melnyk said.
That’s despite research showing that, when nurses and doctors use evidence-based practices, outcomes improve markedly.
Evidence-based practices combines evidence from studies with a clinician’s expertise and a patient’s preferences to create an approach to healthcare that studies have shown improves quality and outcomes while reducing costs.
In 1935, Dr. Leonhard Felix Fuld and his sister, Florentine, created a foundation in honor of their mother, Helene. The Helene Fuld Health Trust is the nation’s largest private funder devoted exclusively to nursing students and nursing education.