NUR 590 Week 7 Assignment  Benchmark – Evidence-Based Practice Proposal Final Paper Throughout this course, you have developed a formal, evidence-based practice proposal.

The wellness of a population’s health using improved patient safety protocols implores healthcare workers (HCWs) especially nurses, to develop evidence-based practice interventions to reduce and prevent occurrence of adverse events like hospital acquired infections (HAIs) and medication administration errors (MAEs) among others. These adverse events lead to poor patient outcomes, increase the overall cost of care and disease burden, and lowers the quality of care delivered by healthcare professionals. Hospital acquired infections are some of the leading healthcare concerns that affect patient safety and quality of care. Many patients suffer from these infections that result into lengthened stays in hospitals, increased cost of care, and in extreme circumstances death.

There are many challenges in improving the health of populations and one of the biggest challenges has to do with the delivery and utilization of the interventions that are being proposed (Dearing, 2018). When it comes to the delivery of the interventions, it incorporates more than one factor. The factors that are considered in the delivery of the interventions include communication, training, leadership, coordination, and management (Dearing, 2018). When it comes to change, organizational readiness needs to be assessed. Two tools that can be used to assess organizational readiness includes the Organizational Readiness to Change Assessment (ORCA) tool and the Organizational Readiness for Implementing Change (ORIC). As my organization is a Magnet facility and already supports and implements evidence-based practices, I chose the ORIC tool to discuss. The ORIC tool is the most appropriate for assessing my organizations readiness as this tool focuses on the readiness of the organizational members for implementing change. Being a Magnet facility, my organization has proven that they support nursing excellence and to determine if the team members are ready for change implementation, the ORIC tool would be ideal to evaluate this. When the organization’s readiness is high, the members are more likely to initiate and put forth greater effort for implementing change and on the flip side when the organization’s readiness is low, the team members are more than likely to view change as undesirable and may resist change (Shea et al., 2014). With my proposed evidence-based change, it does involve a fully engaged team which is even more of a reason to use the ORIC tool to help determine the team’s readiness for change and hopefully lead to a successful change implementation.

Nurse practitioners and other healthcare professionals transmit infections to patients through poor hand hygiene measures and protocols (Alotaibi & Federico, 2017). As such, nurses and other providers should leverage evidence-based practice (EBP) interventions to reduce and prevent the occurrence of hospital acquired infections and guarantee quality care. The use of evidence-based practice interventions allows these providers to offer better services through increased quality, increased engagement of patients and their preferences, and leveraging clinical experience and expertise. The purpose of this evidence-based practice project proposal paper is to discuss how nurses in pediatric settings can integrate hand hygiene measures and protocols to reduce and prevent the occurrence of hospital acquired infections. These measures and protocols include handwashing using soap and water alongside hand sanitizers compared to handwashing with water and soap alone.

Problem Statement

Hospital acquired infections or nosocomial infections are newly acquired infections that patients contract during their stay in hospital settings or facilities. The transmission of the nosocomial infections happens through healthcare workers, patients, hospital equipment like catheters and interventional procedures that include catheterization. Studies demonstrate that healthcare workers who include nurse practitioners infect patients when they fail to adhere to effective hand hygiene measures like handwashing with soap or using alcohol-based sanitizers and hand rubs when handling and interacting with patient in the care process (Liana 2021). The use of evidence-based practice interventions using PICOT question is important in assisting nurses to implement better practices to reduce the susceptibility of patients acquiring nosocomial infections that have adverse effects on overall care delivery and quality. These infections lead to increased length of stay in hospitals, a rise in cost of healthcare and cause deaths, especially in critical care settings like pediatric units (Setty et al., 2019). Hand hygiene measures that include handwashing with soap and water alongside sanitizer will improve patient safety among healthcare workers. The implication is that healthcare workers will adhere to these measures in pedia