CPD activities: improving how you integrate evidence into practice guidelines

To continue reading please register or login to your OHW+ account.

These extra CPD activities and resources are designed to be read alongside our article ‘PG tips – integrating evidence into practice guidelines’, by Jo Rhodes and Professor Anne Harriss.

This, the second article in a two-part series, analysed effective scrutiny of practice guidelines, and assessed the perils of media and online misinformation, especially in the current climate of Covid-19 and Covid-19 vaccine misinformation, spin and manipulation.

Rhodes and Professor Harriss emphasised how media evidence manipulation causes public confusion, leading to reputational and financial damage to the UK. Expensive resources including national campaigns are then needed to re-educate service users, causing a drain on public finances. Individuals may choose non-regulated forums for information which may ultimately result in human cost and suffering.

To that end, enhancement of the knowledge of evidence-based practice (EBP) by OH professionals of EBP is essential to ensure the highest quality of professional practice. These activities and resources will, therefore, help you to understand more deeply about evidence-based practice.

CPD activity 1 – identify areas of occupational health practice in which you are involved.

Evaluate the extent to which evidence underpins those initiatives. How far are you convinced that the evidence on which they are based is up-to date?

CPD activity 2 – access the practice guidelines you are currently using in the service where you are practicing.

Critically evaluate at least three of these in the light of the material included in this series of articles.

CPD activity 3 – think of new occupational health initiatives which could be further developed within your workplace.

Think of the evidence you would need to access in order to do this. Use the materials covered in this series of articles to think of the evidence you would need to collect

CPD activity 4 – access the following online video resources

How nurses can help drive health care innovation. Avalable from: https://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_love_how_nurses_can_help_drive_healthcare_innovation
The Role of Clinical Practice Guidelines in Supporting Decisions Outside the Clinical Encounter, McMaster University,