NURS-6002 Week 3 Discussion

Using the Walden Library

Where can you find evidence to inform your thoughts and scholarly writing? Throughout your degree program, you will use research literature to explore ideas, guide your thinking, and gain new insights. As you search the research literature, it is important to use resources that are peer-reviewed and from scholarly journals. You may already have some favorite online resources and databases that you use or have found useful in the past. For this Discussion, you explore databases available through the Walden Library.

Note: Unless otherwise noted, initial postings to Discussions are due on or before Day 3, and response postings are due on or before Day 6. You are required to participate in the Discussion on at least three different days (a different day for main post and each response). It is important to adhere to the weekly time frame to allow others ample time to respond to your posting. In addition, you are expected to respond to questions directed toward your own initial posting in a timely manner.

Resources

Be sure to review the Learning Resources before completing this activity.
Click the weekly resources link to access the resources.

WEEKLY RESOURCES

To Prepare:

  • Review the information presented in the Learning Resources for using the Walden Library, searching the databases, and evaluating online resources.
  • Begin searching for a peer-reviewed article that pertains to your practice area and interests you.

By Day 3

Post the following:

Using proper APA formatting, cite the peer-reviewed article you selected that pertains to your practice area and is of particular interest to you and identify the database that you used to search for the article. Explain any difficulties you experienced while searching for this article. Would this database be useful to your colleagues? Explain why or why not. Would you recommend this database? Explain why or why not.

By Day 6

Respond to at least two of your colleagues’ posts by offering suggestions/strategies for working with this database from your own experience, or offering ideas for using alternative resources.

 

Solution

As I work toward becoming an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner, I reflect on the last five years of my nursing journey and how it has shaped this goal. I’ve worked in a Level I Trauma Hospital, on step-down units in other hospitals, and have completed assignments as a travel local nurse, including during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. These intense and transformative experiences taught me how critical rapid, evidence-based decisions are in acute care. They’ve also deepened my passion for serving patients in underserved, rural areas; especially in North Florida; where access to timely acute care can mean the difference between life and death.

To support my clinical decisions and scholarly writing, I rely on evidence from the Walden Library’s peer-reviewed databases. One of the most valuable databases I use is CINAHL Plus with Full Text.

 

Using CINAHL, I found this peer-reviewed article that aligns with my acute care interests:

 

Ghafoor, V. L., Rhee, K. Y., & Craig, M. E. (2022). Managing sepsis in the acute care setting: Evidence-based updates for advanced practice nurses. Critical Care Nurse, 42(1), 10–18. https://doi.org/10.4037/ccn2022489

 

This article focuses on the management of sepsis, which I’ve seen often in my clinical practice. The piece provides updated evidence-based recommendations that emphasize early recognition, timely intervention, and structured sepsis protocols—skills that are essential for acute care nurse practitioners, especially in high-acuity or rural settings where resources are limited.

 

Initially, I had some difficulty locating the most relevant article because my first searches were too broad. After narrowing my terms with keywords like “acute care,” “nurse practitioner,” and “critical care,” and by selecting modifications such as “peer-reviewed” and “last five years,” I was able to narrow down my results significantly.

I would strongly recommend CINAHL Plus to my colleagues. It’s designed specifically for nursing and allied health professionals and makes locating current, high-quality research much more efficient than general databases. Research shows that access to resources like CINAHL improves nurses’ ability to implement evidence-based practices, which is essential in acute care environments (Brown et al., 2009).

My long-term goal is to use what I’ve learned, both in practice and academia, to serve vulnerable populations in rural North and central Florida as an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner—bridging gaps in care and improving outcomes in places where advanced practice providers are greatly needed.

 

 

 

References

 

Brown, C. E., Wickline, M. A., Ecoff, L., & Glaser, D. (2009). Nursing practice, knowledge, attitudes, and perceived barriers to evidence-based practice at an academic medical center. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 65(2), 371–381. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2008.04878.x

 

Ghafoor, V. L., Rhee, K. Y., & Craig, M. E. (2022). Managing sepsis in the acute care setting: Evidence-based updates for advanced practice nurses. Critical Care Nurse, 42(1), 10–18. https://doi.org/10.4037/ccn2022489

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