Background: Nurses in clinical practice need to be flexible and be prepared for complex and demanding clinical situations. Therefore, clinical supervision is essential for quality of nursing care and is a mechanism to support nurses in their clinical practice, promoting a reflective practice and supporting continuous quality-improvement activities, essential for evidence-based practice (EBP) contexts. It is necessary to equip nurses with knowledge and skills required for EBP and design a programme by considering supporting factors and barriers for integrating EBP into the clinical setting. In the research field it is crucial to study the mechanisms for translating evidence knowledge into clinical practice. This research plan is part of a larger study, namely: 'Clinical Supervision for Safety and Care Quality' (C-S2AFECARE-Q).
Objectives: To develop nurses' evidence-practice knowledge and skills through the implementation of a clinical-supervision model which promotes safety and improvements in the quality of care.
Methods: In the first stage we will conduct a scoping review using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) approach that aims to map the existing body of literature regarding EBP implementation programmes or interventions. Then we will implement action-research in three phases. In the first one, we will identify nurses’ clinical-supervision needs and assess their evidence-based practice capabilities, using the Portuguese version of Evidence-Based Practice Questionnaire (QECPBE-20). In the second phase we will implement the clinical-supervision model and incorporate the results of the scoping review. In the last phase, we will assess the same indicator with the instrument used in phase one and compare the results. We will also relate the efficacy of the clinical-supervision model to the development of clinical efficacy and evidence-based practice skills.
Conclusions: The project will demonstrate the importance of clinical supervision in nursing as a support for EBP context implementation, promoting safety and quality of care. We are now developing the scoping review and will present the protocol at the Summit.