Evidence is king in health care. It hasn’t always been that way, but there’s no turning back now. Nurses must be comfortable searching, interpreting, and writing about research, which is why baccalaureate nursing programs focus so heavily on research, theorists, and papers as well as part of the reason I blog about articles weekly.

Last week I sat in a meeting in which a very important person replied to a nurse sharing a concern, “I understand that’s how you feel. Show me the data that says it’s so.” We all paused. He was right. Not only did we need to know how to go through the medical and nursing literature, but we also needed to research and gather the data – the evidence – from within our own system.

Data drives nursing practice. Data drives healthcare administration. Too often nurses underestimate the value of data collection and analyzation. It’s powerful.

The next time you see a concern or have a solution to a problem, pull the evidence. You’ll be glad you did.