Clinical Practice

Clinical PracticeNameInstitutionInstructorCourseDate Clinical PracticeClinical practice involves using evidence-based guidelines and activities that are meant to enhance patient care. For these guidelines to be developed, a careful assessment of the benefits of alternative care methods is done as well as the negative effects of these methods (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2015). These guidelines assist healthcare practitioners in making effective healthcare decisions based on different healthcare scenarios that impact patient outcomes. A situation in which a new clinical practice was put in place was in managing pain for an infant. Pain has been managed through medications for adults. However, managing pain in infants may be a complex process requiring an assessment of other alternatives (Melnyk & Fineout-Overholt, 2015). Since newborns are not efficient in identifying the pain in their body, the healthcare practitioner was required to use other skills to determine the pain in the body of the infant. In addressing this situation, the nurse used non-pharmacologic approaches that include behavioral and environmental measures to identify the cause of pain (Hall & Anand, 2014). A DNP-prepared nurse was leading the translation of the practice from research by identifying the most effective practice to address the situation since the baby was not responding to external stimuli. The strategies implemented had been indicated to have a high success rate compared to other interventions available (Hall & Anand, 2014). Determining the most effective intervention was based on knowledge and previous research providing information on the outcome of using this approach. Besides achieving the desired goals, this approach also improved the safety of the infant preventing some of the negative effects of using some of the traditional practices and health interventions (Molas-Gallart, D’Este, Llopis, & Rafols, 2016). This ultimately improved patient care as the pain was effectively addressed. The DNP-prepared nurse also involved other healthcare practitioners in the decision-making process to provide more information related to pain management in infants (Molas-Gallart et al., 2016). ReferencesHall, R. W., & Anand, K. J. (2014). Pain management in newborns. Clinics in perinatology, 41(4), 895-924.Melnyk, B. M., & Fineout-Overholt, E. (2015). Evidence-based practice in nursing and healthcare: A guide to best practice(3rd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer Health. Molas-Gallart, J., D’Este, P., Llopis, O., & Rafols, I. (2016). Towards an alternative framework for the evaluation of translational research initiatives. Research Evaluation, 25(3), 235-243.