Is there a difference between “common practice” and “best practice”?

When you first went to work for your current organization, experienced colleagues may have shared with you details about processes and procedures. Perhaps you even attended an orientation session to brief you on these matters. As a “rookie,” you likely kept the nature of your questions to those with answers that would best help you perform your new role.

Over time and with experience, perhaps you recognized aspects of these processes and procedures that you wanted to question further. This is the realm of clinical inquiry.

Clinical inquiry is the practice of asking questions about clinical practice. To continuously improve patient care, all nurses should consistently use clinical inquiry to question why they are doing something the way they are doing it. Do they know why it is done this way, or is it just because we have always done it this way? Is it a common practice or a best practice?

Identify clinical areas of interest and inquiry and practice searching for research in support of maintaining or changing these practices. Analyze this research to compare research methodologies employed.

To Prepare:

  • Review the Resources and identify a clinical issue of interest that can form the basis of a clinical inquiry.
  • Based on the clinical issue of interest and using keywords related to the clinical issue of interest, search at least four different databases in the Walden Library to identify at least four relevant peer-reviewed articles related to your clinical issue of interest. You should not be using systematic reviews for this assignment, select original research articles.
  • Review the results of your peer-reviewed research and reflect on the process of using an unfiltered database to search for peer-reviewed research.
  • Reflect on the types of research methodologies contained in the four relevant peer-reviewed articles you selected.

Part 1: An Introduction to Clinical Inquiry

Create a 4- to 5-slide PowerPoint presentation in which you do the following:

  • Identify and briefly describe your chosen clinical issue of interest.
  • Describe how you used keywords to search on your chosen clinical issue of interest.
  • Identify the four research databases that you used to conduct your search for the peer-reviewed articles you selected.
  • Provide APA citations of the four peer-reviewed articles you selected.