The evidence base for children's nursing practice

Children's nurses are now expected to be able to provide the evidence base that underpins their clinical practice. This simple statement hides the complex nature of the processes involved in bringing together such evidence, given the vast wealth of published resources. The first part of this chapter aims to explore the sources of evidence available to children's nurses and how they can be used to develop the evidence base for a particular area of practice. Every good research textbook includes general guidance on critiquing research evidence but these texts do not generally explore issues specific to research involving children. These are explored in some depth in the next section of the chapter. Finally, the historical context of children's nursing research is discussed, from which some of the emerging themes for future research are outlined.