Evidence-Based Practice: Nurses’ Knowledge and Implementation in the Prevention of Pressure Sore Amongst Debilitating Patients in Selected Government Hospitals, Delta State

Evidence-Based Practice: Nurses’ knowledge and implementation; in the prevention of Pressure sore amongst debilitating patients was carried out in selected Government Hospitals in Delta State. The research method for the study was a correlational survey design. A simple random sampling was used to select 250 respondents. Permission to collect data was sought from the Ethical Committee of the Hospital Management Board and from respondents. The data collection instrument was a self-developed structured questionnaire that was validated before use. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and the test statistic used for the hypotheses was the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient at 95% CI (i.e., at 0.05 significance level). The results demonstrated 54.4% had knowledge of EBP, 19.6% of nurses employed EBP to prevent pressure sore while and 19.6% employed best practice. There exists a significant relationship between nurses’ level of knowledge of EBP and the prevention of Pressure sore in debilitating patients (r=0.338, df-248, p<0.05). There was a relationship between the implementation strategy of EBP and the prevention of Pressure sore in debilitating patients (r=0.258, df-248, p<0.05). This study revealed the majority had knowledge of EBP. However, there is still a wide gap in knowledge as 38.8% of nurses indicated that opinion, expertise, and intuition are sufficient in preventing Pressure sore in debilitating patients. Nurses are to use nursing models. Models not only increase patient’s satisfaction and quality of nursing care but also offer a useful set of frameworks to guide education and nursing practice as failure to translate research evidence into practice hinders patients from adequate care and is likely to have skin breakdown. Keywords: Evidence-based practice, Implementation, Nurse’s knowledge, Pressure sore, Prevention.