Interdepartmental Collaboration for Evidence-based Practice

While undertaking a study to learn how nurse managers (NMs) support clinical nurses in the conduction of evidence-based practice (EBP), the Center for Nursing Excellence (CFNE) system director (CFNESD) and a hospital chief nursing officer (CNO) in a large health care system in the southeastern part of the country partnered with key department system-wide leaders to remove an important barrier to EBP-access to data (unpublished data). Through a collaborative effort, a toolkit (Figure 1) was developed, providing authorized users access to data required for EBP and performance improvement (PI) work. This article describes this successful interdepartmental collaborative effort and how the specially designed Toolkit, developed for the earlier study, has been expanded to support EBP and professional nursing practice in all the hospitals through this health care system (unpublished data).