Research to support evidence-based practice in COPD community nursing

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a requirement of nurses through the generation of evidence to implementing it, in a bid to to improve clinical practice. However, EBP is difficult to achieve. This paper highlights an approach to generating evidence for enhancing community nursing services for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) through a collaborative partnership. A district nurse and two nursing lecturers formed a partnership to devise a systematic review protocol and perform a systematic review to enhance COPD practice. This paper illustrates the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) systematic review process, the review outcomes and the practitioner learning. Collaborative partnerships between academics, researchers and clinicians are a potentially useful model to facilitate enhanced outcomes in evidence-based practice and evidence application.