Evidence-based practice has become a prominent issue in international health care. Rising health costs, the management principle of doing things right and the desire for quality improvement have created a climate for the evolution of evidence-based health care (Rycroft-Malone, Bucknall, Melnyk, 2004).
The movement was sparked by evidence-based medicine stimulated by the work of Cochrane (1976) and Sackett (1997). The end results are policy imperatives around clinical guideline development, research agendas focusing on intervention and problem based learning curricula (Kittson, 2004).
As nursing became involved in this movement, the quest to define best practices began, often ...