Building Capacity for EBP: PNW Senior Nursing Capstone Students' Remarkable Projects

Purdue Northwest senior Capstone course trains our nursing students to use an evidence-based quality improvement approach to addressing a clinical problem. Our students work in small groups with a trained faculty mentor and are in direct contact with the project director at the health care setting. To date, our nursing students have received over $10,000 in grant monies to work on projects resulting in improved patient safety and quality of care.

Our nursing students graduate ready to improve healthcare by actively engaging in evidence-based quality improvement. Why this is important:

Reason #1

PNW nurses understand what best available evidence means. They are prepared to conduct advanced searches of a variety of evidence sources; from Google Scholar to library databases to clinical practice guidelines, the students understand sources of evidence.

Reason #2

We understand finding evidence is not enough. There needs to be an appraisal of the quality of the evidence. We begin teaching our students how to appraise articles early in the nursing program. By the time they graduate, our students can competently appraise all types of evidence.

Reason #3

Synthesis. We spend a lot of time training our students how to synthesize the evidence to come up with the strength of support for interventions. This means our graduates will ask questions about why something is done the way it is and we wouldn't have it any other way!

Let us show you

Since 2017, our students have completed over 250 practice improvement projects. Let us show you some examples of their work. Navigate to the Evidence in Practice tab and the abstracts of our most recent work is free to view.