Impacts on the Change of Nursing Practice - Thesis Example

The nursing discipline has been utilizing research evidence for over 30 years, state Estabrooks, Winther and Derksen (2004). However, scholars continue to be unable to identify what influences research utilization. Individual determinants of research utilization are not reflected in research findings on individual factors predicting research use. Further, Scott-Findlay & Estabrooks (2006) found that in research projects on nursing organizational culture, where individual determinants were studied, the investigators often studied determinants not amenable to change, for example, age, gender, and years of nursing experience.

Taking into consideration the fact that the majority of healthcare professionals including nurses work in complex organizations, it is important to shift focus towards studying determinants of research utilization for nurses as a whole, at the organizational level. Nursing culture helps to determine the nursing organizational influence on nurses’ behaviours, particularly in relation to research use behaviours. Thus, Scott-Findlay & Estabrooks (2006, p.499) observe that “in nursing, one organizational aspect, organizational culture, is increasingly cited as a significant influence on the use of research by clinicians” such as nurses involved in clinical practice.

According to Del Bueno and Vincent (1986), in nursing, the term organizational culture first appeared in 1986. Among a limited number of organizational culture frameworks in the available literature, one of the most commonly used frameworks is that of Schein (1992). Culture is cited at three fundamental levels, in a hierarchical manner; these include observable artefacts, values, and basic underlying assumptions. Artefacts are the most accessible elements of culture, being visible and tangible.

Values are the distinctly expressed norms, social principles and ideologies considered to have intrinsic worth and importance within the organization. Assumptions are the innermost or core elements of culture, they provide expectations that impact perceptions, concepts and feelings about the organization such as the field of nursing. According to Scott-Findlay and Estabrooks (2006, p.499), “assumptions are the taken-for-granted beliefs about reality and human nature that practitioners in an organization share”.

Thus, artefacts are manifestations of values, while values are manifestations of assumptions. The three levels of nursing culture constantly and repeatedly influence each other. Thesis Statement: The purpose of this paper is to investigate nursing culture, and examine its impacts on the change of nursing practice, with an emphasis on evidence-based practise and nursing research. Nursing Culture Culture constitutes a set of definitions of reality commonly believed in by a group of people sharing a distinctive way of life.

Definitions of organizational culture centre on enduring attributes of culture such as values, assumptions, and beliefs that guide the processes within the group. As in most groups and organizations, in the case of nursing also, culture is considered as the normative glue’ that protectively sustains, fortifies, and maintains the group’s equilibrium, states Sleutel (2000).  Nursing culture is also a control mechanism that guides and develops nursing behaviour and attitudes.