Organizational Culture and Readiness Assessment

Annie Thomas
Grand Canyon University

Organizational Culture and Readiness Assessment
Evidence-based practice has been widely recognized as a key to the delivery of high-quality healthcare and enhancing patient outcomes at significantly lower costs. Unfortunately, as Melnyk and Fineout-Overholt (2015) elaborate, although there is a wide range of evidence to guide clinical practice, the integration of evidence-based care by healthcare providers is significantly low in a majority of the health care organizations. Drawing upon survey on the organizational culture and readiness assessment, the organization is moderately ready to implement EBP. Ideally, the organization’s readiness is based on the philosophy of EBP, the presence of EBP mentors, and administrative support. The presence of EBP mentors includes healthcare providers such as Advanced Practice Nurses, who are academically prepared to implement EBP. Administrative support is in form of fiscal resources such as conferences, workshops, and education programs focusing on training nurses on EBP. Focusing on possible project barriers and facilitators, lack of EBP knowledge and skills in the organization is one of the major barriers to EBP implementation. The librarians within the organization do not have sufficient knowledge and skills to help with searching for EBP evidence.
A clinical inquiry is a process where clinicians collect data using narrowly defined clinical parameters to enhance treatment options. Within the healthcare organizational setting, cultivation of clinical inquiry is necessary. Melnyk and Fineout-Overholt (2015)recommend that one of the ways to integrate clinical inquiry into the organization is by cultivating a level of uncertainty, which is the inability to predict the outcome of experience and provides the basis for developing foreground questions.

References
Melnyk, B. M., & Fineout-Overholt, E. (2015). Evidence-based practice in nursing & healthcare: A guide to best practice. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer.