Project Team: Dr Kylie Murphy, Dr Tracey Parnell, Dr Narelle Patton,
Dr Kate Freire, & Professor Rod Pope; Charles Sturt University, NSW, Australia

In 2019, we were sponsored by the Australian and New Zealand Association for Health Professional Educators (ANZAHPE) to develop an Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) learning and assessment framework to address an identified lack of guidance for clinical placement supervisors. An important aim was to address the lack of shared understanding between students, academics, and placement supervisors about the principles and steps involved in high-quality EBP.

Our work on this project was inspired and guided by contemporary EBP scholarship. At the core of healthcare professional practice is the ethical aim of achieving optimal outcomes for clients in their unique circumstances. We not only need good healthcare practitioners, but healthcare practitioners who will do good.  Optimal client outcomes are achieved when healthcare practitioners take a broad view of the circumstances and most likely consequences of possible actions, and conscientiously and collaboratively determine what is best to do, before acting.  EBP provides a framework to guide critically reflective decision-making and the provision of client-centred, situationally appropriate, safe, and effective healthcare.

The way that EBP occurs will differ between professionals at different levels of experience. Compared with more experienced practitioners, students and new graduates may need to engage more frequently and consciously in EBP processes, as they develop mastery within their scope of practice. However, for all practitioners, we believe that an EBP approach is essential to good practice.  We hope that the framework we have developed in this project will assist more health practitioners in the future to capitalise on the full potential of EBP to do good. 

In true EBP spirit, in developing this framework, we drew on the best available literature, our own professional experience, and the experience-based perspectives of three important stakeholder groups: students, academics, and placement supervisors. We also regularly engaged in collegial critical-reasoning discussions and in-depth reflection. We are delighted to share the results of this process.

Please get in touch with any feedback or suggestions.

The Project Team

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