Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a critical piece of the nursing profession puzzle. Evidence-based practice, which involves using the best available research in conjunction with clinical expertise, is essential to answering clinical questions and providing quality patient care.1  Thanks to EBP, the days of doing things “the way they have always been done” are long gone. Today’s nurses must find and evaluate evidence to support research projects, solve difficult clinical problems, and justify departmental and institutional policies and procedures.

To find the best evidence, nurses should be adept at searching databases, such as MEDLINE/PubMed and CINAHL. However, many nurses find the process of literature searching to be daunting, which is partly because of the overwhelming amount of biomedical research, which, according to one estimate, increases by thousands of articles per hour.2  Unease with technology and unfamiliarity with resources are a few more reasons why nurses may shy away from...

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