Research-based practice
In obstetric practice, errors may occur due to the unpredictability associated with pregnancy, labor, and delivery. Obstetric nursing is a high-risk responsibility that requires core competence. Due to advancements and application of technology in healthcare, nurses can invest more in evidence-based practice to improve birth outcomes and avoid litigation. For instance, in the previous years, it was standard procedure for nurses to wait for one to five minutes before cord clamping since this delay was beneficial to the baby. However, current health practices advocate for immediate cord clamping, 10 to 15 seconds after delivery to keep the mother from losing too much blood. In this case, nurses may be in a dilemma on the best strategy to use such that the mother is safe and the baby benefits in the process.
Research-based practice requires the nurse to apply knowledge and access all current scientific resources on the issue. However, accessing electronic information requires narrowing down the search to save on time and to obtain the best results (Russell-Rose & Chamberlain, 2017). For the nurse to get information on this topic, the best keywords to use are umbilical cord cutting, umbilical cord clamping, placenta separation, and delayed cord clamping. Due to the precision required in nursing practice, an advanced search would provide more accurate and current results. Using advanced search makes it easy to access various healthcare databases (“WEST COAST UNIVERSITY,” 2020). The more the databases accessed, the more the results and the greater the reliability of these results. Advanced search also allows the use of Boolean operators “AND” between keywords in the search panel. Another essential aspect in advanced search is the ability to limit the search to peer-reviewed articles.