A Nurse Practitioner's View

Just wanted to update anyone following me as I am finishing up the DNP (graduation is May 2011!) The work is intense. Trying to juggle school, work and family life, is a challenge. However I know that it is already worth it. My perspective on my practice has changed for the better and I now incorporate evidence-based practice and culturally competent care in all of my interactions. My group of four are knee deep into the data analysis/synthesis of our systematic review. The statistical portion is mind numbing after looking at all of these clinical trials and trying to synthesize them into something that will make sense. We are also incorporating non randomized controlled trials (RCTs) into our write up which brings additional challenges in answering our clinical question (focused on diabetes and group medical visits). We have been busy reading and re-reading clinical studies, crunching numbers, e-mailing study authors (many who don't actually write back to you), making forest plot...

I recently wrote about my pursuit of the DNP and my rationale for it. As promised, here is the first brief installment of posts chronicling my final year of school (I actually have 10 months left now but who's counting!) Part of the final project is writing a systematic review. Since one of the principles of our program is evidence-based practice (EBP), our final project must be framed in the form of a PICO question. That is, Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome. My group and I are still tweaking our question but it is centered on adults with type II diabetes. (Plus, I do need to maintain some level of suspense throughout these posts!) In order to gather the evidence, a comprehensive, systematic, and exhaustive search of the literature must be performed using key words and MeSH terms to narrow down the number of hits we get on our search. This is a critical part of any systematic review since the evidence gleaned will lay the groundwork for the review. We are searc...