ESSENTIAL III

e-Portfolio Essential III: Scholarship for evidence-based practice

Laura Ellis
Frostburg State University

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The American Association of Colleges of Nursing provides specific qualifications
for nurses seeking a bachelors level competency in nursing practice. The AACN has nine
essential requirements of a professional nurse including number nine; Baccalaureate
Generalist Nursing Practice. The focus of Essential III is that baccalaureate nurses stay up
to date on current evidence-based practice and implementing current recommendations
into patient care. Baccalaureate nurses integrate reliable evidence from multiple ways of
knowing to inform practice and make clinical judgments. (2008, pg. 16).
Exemplar
The selected exemplar demonstrates the ability to gather relevant and related
research and develop new practice recommendations based on the evidence. This
exemplar describes a PICO question regarding alarm fatigue in ICU nurses and current
practice recommendations to reduce the risk of developing alarm fatigue. This exemplar
is reflective of what the AACN states is a baccalaureate prepared nurse.
Reflection
The selected assignment takes a sequential approach to implementing evidencebased practice into patient care. With the PICO question, in critical care bedside
nurses, do patient specific physiological alarm settings, as opposed to standard
settings, reduce alarm fatigue?, the evidence-based practice assignment aims to
understand how to best reduce alarm fatigue in nurses based on current research. This
assignment outlines precisely which terms and databases were utilized to gather a
comprehensive collection of the latest practice recommendations to reduce alarm
fatigue in nurses. As described by the AACN, baccalaureate prepared nurses are able

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to collaborate in the collection, documentation, and dissemination of evidence and
develop links between the evidence and the practice (2008, pg. 16). The research that
was analyzed for this project indicates that there are interventions that can effectively
reduce alarm fatigue in ICU nurses. Alarm fatigue can lead to decreased
responsiveness and delayed reaction to critical alarms and thus could potentially
cause harm to patients. As a BSN prepared nurse, it is of the utmost importance to
understand and implement to most up to date evidence-based practice
recommendations in order to provide the best and most safe patient care.

References:

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American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2008). The Essentials of Baccalaureate
Education for Professional Nursing Practice. Washington, DC.