Abstract

As a nursing student, I learned to shave patients in preparation for surgery; as a public health nurse, I taught mothers to clean their infants' umbilical cords with alcohol and showed patients newly diagnosed with diabetes how to wipe the skin with alcohol before injecting insulin. Since then, high-quality research has shown that pre-operative shaving increases rather than decreases post-operative infections (Kjonniksen et al. 2002), that cleaning umbilical cords with sterile water shortens the time to cord separation without increasing infections (Medves and O'Brien 1997) and that insulin can be safely injected through clothing (Fleming et al. 1997). These are only three of innumerable examples of how high-quality studies of nursing care can influence our practice.As a nursing student, I learned to shave patients in preparation for surgery; as a public health nurse, I taught mothers to clean their infants' umbilical cords with alcohol and showed patients newly diagnosed with diabetes how to wipe the skin with alcohol before injecting insulin. Since then, high-quality research has shown that pre-operative shaving increases rather than decreases post-operative infections (Kjonniksen et al. 2002), that cleaning umbilical cords with sterile water shortens the time to cord separation without increasing infections (Medves and O'Brien 1997) and that insulin can be safely injected through clothing (Fleming et al. 1997). These are only three of innumerable examples of how high-quality studies of nursing care can influence our practice.

As a nursing student, I learned to shave patients in preparation for surgery; as a public health nurse, I taught mothers to clean their infants' umbilical cords with alcohol and showed patients newly diagnosed with diabetes how to wipe the skin with alcohol before injecting insulin. Since then, high-quality research has shown that pre-operative shaving increases rather than decreases post-operative infections (Kjonniksen et al. 2002),