Best practices act as vital sources of practice-based evidence that is crucial in determining the effectiveness of public health interventions that are applied in real-life contexts. Selecting best practices, thus aids in evaluating the nursing interventions that are implemented at the community level to generate practice-based evidence ( Ng & de Colombani , 2015 ). This essay is aimed at sharing perspectives on the best practices of implementing a community health nursing project.
The idea of systematic identification of best practices was first embraced by the private sector. In this context, a best practice referred to a model of pursuing excellence, against which the counterparts in a given industry would benchmark all their operations in order to foster better performance ( Ng & de Colombani , 2015). The idea of best practices in the public sector additionally emphasizes policy transfers from one country to another. This conceptualization of best practices is being implemented in healthcare amongst other sectors. In this context, a best practice broadly refers to a healthcare intervention, policy, activity, or program.
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Identification of best practices in such healthcare contexts as nursing is aimed at preventing the wastage of resources by avoiding ‘reinvention of the wheel’ ( Ng & de Colombani , 2015). This is achieved through learning from what other individuals have done under comparable settings. This exchange of knowledge aids in facilitating the improvement of existing practices. It also assists those initiating new interventions in avoiding common errors and accelerating the development of the program in question.
Several factors should be put into consideration when selecting the best practices for implementing a community health nursing project. In particular, the project should be characterized by relevance, community participation, stakeholder collaboration, replicability, sustainability, efficiency, ethical soundness, and effectiveness ( Ng & de Colombani , 2015; Green, 2006). These attributes should be manifested across the program contexts, processes, as well as outcomes. While the chosen best practices may not exhibit all the above criteria, they should not deviate from any of the attributes. For example, while the best practices may not show a causal link with decreased mortality, they ought not to show increased mortality. Overall, for best practices to achieve their purpose as learning tools in community health nursing, the emphasis has to be placed on the context-specific nature of the programs in question. Likewise, vital elements of the programs have to be adapted before being replicated in other settings.
References
Green, L. W. (2006). Public health asks of systems science: To advance our evidence-based practice, can you help us get more practice-based evidence?. American journal of public health , 96 (3), 406-409 .
Ng, E., & de Colombani, P. (2015). Framework for selecting best practices in public health: a systematic literature review. Journal of public health research , 4 (3).
