Revealing the invisible college of evidence-based practice in nursing: Mapping citations from policy and procedure documents in the intermountain west region of the United States.

Abstract

Citation analysis identifies the empirical sources of evidence cited by nurses in hospital policy and procedure documents. This study investigates nursing procedure documents created or updated during a 12-month period prior to a site visit by the researcher at hospitals with libraries that are full members of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) in the intermountain west region of the United States. All site visits occurred between September 2012 and November 2013. In addition to gathering study site demographics, the units of analysis include the policy and procedure documents explicit linkages to books or book chapters, journal articles, websites, government documents, dissertations, pamphlets, product manuals, recordings, interviews, or from subscription evidence-based practice summary databases the nursing document authors record to support, provide precedent for, illustrate, or elaborate patient care decisions. Analysis of the citations describes the scholarly interconnections of hospital nurses related to knowledge building for patient care procedures, and informs evidence-based practices for medical librarians working in hospitals.