Use of Evidence Practice Guidelines by Nurse Practitioners

Evidence practice guidelines are statements that are formulated by experts to help
healthcare practitioners, patients, and administrators to make the best possible decisions
regarding a patient’s health in different circumstances (Grosso, 2018). The practice
guidelines are based on the available evidence about various clinical situations. The
guidelines are just recommendations that a nurse practitioner may choose to follow or not to
follow. They are not meant to replace their judgment (Grosso, 2018). Since they provide
nurse practitioners with recommendations for the best course of action in different clinical
situations, evidence practice guidelines play an important role in promoting standard of care.
Standard of care is the optimum care level that a patient can receive (Ruhl & Siegal, 2017).
Thus, even though evidence practice guidelines do not replace the judgment of nurse
practitioners, it is generally perceived as good practice for nurse practitioners to follow
evidence practice guidelines.

The use of evidence practice guidelines by nurse practitioners not only helps them to
provide safe and effective care to patients but may also help them avoid medical malpractice
claims. When litigating medical malpractice claims, the key to establishing the innocence or
guilt of a nurse practitioner is determining whether or not there was a breach in the standard
of care (Narotam, 2020). Evidence practice guidelines promote and standardize the use of
evidence-based care that is efficient and effective (Narotam, 2020). Thus, evidence practice
guidelines can be used to establish standard of care. Even though the guidelines are not the
only ones that courts use to establish standard of care, they play a leading role in the
decisions that courts make about the legal standard of care (Ruhl & Siegal, 2017). This means
that the use of evidence practice guidelines by nurse practitioners can strengthen their defense

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against accusations of medical malpractice because such use shows that they did not breach
standard of care when performing patient care.

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References

Grosso, S. (2018). What is reasonable and what can be proved as reasonable: reflections on
the role of evidence-based medicine and clinical practice guidelines in medical
negligence claims. Annals Health Law, 27 (74).

Narotam, P. (2020). Medical Ethics & Neurosurgery. Health Policy.

Ruhl, D. S., & Siegal, G. (2017). Medical Malpractice Implications of Clinical Practice
Guidelines. Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, 157(2),
175–177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0194599817707943.