Self-Efficacy and the Competency of Nursing Students Toward the Implementation of Evidence-Based Practice

Abstract

Introduction: Professional nurses should have adequate competency in order to apply Evidence Based Practice (EBP) in their nursing care. However, many nurses provide nursing care based on traditions, habits and personal experience. Less confidence in the feeling of nurses about their competency when employing EBP could inhibit successful EBP implementation in nursing care. Therefore, introducing and applying EBP during clinical placements in the Ners program is essential to form a professional attitude and to provide a basic level of experience when applying EBP in patient care. However, the self-efficacy and competence of the students when applying EBP has not yet been evaluated properly and there is little known about the nursing students’ competences and self-efficacy toward EBP implementation during clinical practice. Thus, the study aims to describe the self-efficacy and competency of nursing students toward the implementation of EBP, while also investigating the relationship between self-efficacy and the competency of nursing students in the implementation of EBP.Methods: This descriptive correlational study involved 120 nursing students who were actively registered on the Ners program 2016/2017. The data was collected by using the self-reporting Evidence-Based Practice Questionnaire (EBPQ), which was then analysed descriptively and inferentially using statistics.Results: The results of this study revealed that more than half (55%) of the participants had a high score of self-efficacy and almost half (49%) were categorised as having a high competence when implementing EBP. The self-efficacy score was significantly correlated to the score of competency (r = 0.607, p < 0.01).Conclusion: This study recommends that the development of the students’ competence in implementing EBP is essential to promote self-efficacy when applying EBP, and vice versa.

Undergraduate Nursing Students’ Experience in Studying Evidence-Based Practice by Application of Concept Map

“…The current figure is supported by many researches that concluded that nurses' perceptions of EBP were focused on professional growth, as well as expanding their knowledge base and skill for standardized healthcare [33,40,41,42,43,44]. Moreover, the current results were in agreement with Herliani et al [45] who found that students gained skills of retrieving and appraising single empiric articles, as well as assessing the strength of the evidence.…”

Effects of Dispositional Resilience and Self-Efficacy on Practice in Advanced Care Planning of Terminally Ill Patients among Taiwanese Nurses: A Study Using Path Modeling

“…Our results showed that self-efficacy might affect practice toward the ACP of terminally ill patients among nurses. This finding is consistent with those reported by prior studies [27][28][29]. Self-efficacy helps nurses feel more confident about their ability to provide appropriate, timely, and tender care.…”

“…It can help nurses enhance their belief that they can perform a task or take action. Self-efficacy is helpful to practice and can improve the ACP implementation [28][29][30].…”

The relationship between undergraduate nursing students' satisfaction about clinical learning environment and their competency self-efficacy

“…Their elevated level of competency self-efficacy is positively matching with their high satisfaction level about the clinical learning environment which includes: educational methodology in clinical training, instructor coaching, nursing staff supervision, peer relationship, client's communication, routine care rules, and academic grading. [1,44,45] It is essential to determine all factors that parallel and enhance nursing students' competency self-efficacy because strong competency self-efficacy is the hope of any nursing program, Medical-Surgical Nursing and Nursing Education in general. This positive correlation is expected and is a perfect sign for all our nursing students plus it is supporting the study hypothesis.…”