Implementing Evidence-Based Practice in the Psychiatric Setting: The Use of Nursing Situation Exemplars

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate a Doctor of Nursing Practice Project through the implementation of a structured quality improvement project, designed to increase the use of evidence-based practice (EBP) among psychiatric nurses in a metropolitan acute care setting. An increase in understanding and use of EBP was achieved by comparing data obtained from pre-implementation and post-implementation surveys designed to seek attitudes toward, knowledge of, and use of EBP in a psychiatric setting. This evidence-based proposal is aligned with the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing’s caring philosophy and the call for using evidence-based information to inform nursing practice.