With the explosion of nursing and health care literature, we as nurses, along with all health professionals, must develop the skills necessary to find, critique and then use research that is relevant to nursing practice. These skills include identification of clinical practice issues, the use of efficient literature search strategies and the use of guidelines to help determine the importance and usefulness of research results. One value of nursing research lies in its contribution to improve client care. Research confirms that the way we care for patients is the most effective. It also tests new ways to improve care and reduce costs.
Research brings credibility to nurses and increases nursing power to influence the care of patients.
Nurses read research articles to keep up to date on new findings for clinical practice. This systematic approach to critical appraisal, outlined in this paper, will help all nurses determine the effectiveness of specific interventions or treatments. This approach to reading and critiquing research articles is the basis of evidenced based nursing care.