Welcome to the Nursing Student's Guide to Evidence-Based Research. This guide is intended to help you to understand and practice evidence-based nursing, and learn to use the library and standard nursing research tools to find evidence for your assignments and your practice. We also hope that you will find the guide useful for many of your information needs as nursing students. We've included resources that relate to your assignments, resources for study and practice, tips for success as nursing students, links to professional news, and apps and social media sites you may find useful. We hope that you will help us keep the guide fresh and useful by sharing your favorite sites with us. To suggest a site to add, please send e-mail to library@atlanticcape.edu.
Need to check out something about the program? Visit the web site of the Nursing Department.
As you work your way through the nursing program, you will have a number of assignments that require you to find, evaluate, and use research from the nursing literature. Your program uses evidence-based practice as a framework for learning about nursing, and many healthcare organizations make this a cornerstone of their practice, so this is an important part of your professional education.
Nursing research covers a wide range of topics, but clinical research is the core of the nursing literature. Several of your research assignments will require you to work with clinical research.
Clinical research encompasses any research that relates to the treatment of patients. Clinical research studies are the most numerous and important type of research in the field. They provide the basis for evidence-based practice.
To learn more about other areas of nursing research, check out the box below.
There are three important subpages hiding under the Home tab of this guide:
Introduction to Evidence-Based Practice
Reading and Evaluating Research
Please check out these sections to learn more about finding and using clinical research for your assignments and your practice.
Nursing is a multifaceted profession that can be studied in many ways. Nurses conduct and publish research on all aspects of their profession, and as nursing students, you will need to become familiar with the literature in your field. Here are some of the major approaches to research in the field of nursing that compliment clinical research:
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This guide was developed by Ellen Parker, Atlantic Cape Community College Libraries. Updated and revised by Leslie Murtha.
Originally published 2014.