Building a culture of best practice

When consumers enter a health care system, they expect their or their loved one's care to be of the highest quality based on best practices. However, best practice does not happen without careful, purposeful cultivation. To build an organizational culture of best practice, the focus of all personnel from administrators to volunteers must be to foster an environment in which care is based on the best available research (i.e., evidence), interpreted through the skills, knowledge, and judgment of competent clinicians, combined with patient desires to bring about quality outcomes (i.e., evidence-based practice [EBP]).1 Best practice occurs within a context of caring and thereby results in collaborative clinical decision-making that leads to the highest quality outcomes for patients and their families.1