Sue Taylor and Davina Allen argue that there are two fundamental ideas behind evidence-based nursing practice in the UK and look at the tensions within them

Evidence-based practice (EBP) has gained increasing prominence in health care in recent years. The term refers to the use of best available evidence to improve outcomes and inform clinical practice (Hicks and Hennessey 1997). Within this broad definition, however, EBP comprises different elements, including an orientation towards critical self-evaluation, the production of evidence through research, the ability to scrutinise evidence for its validity and clinical applicability and the use of clinical practice guidelines to disseminate proven diagnostic and therapeutic knowledge (Timmermans and Berg 2003). In nursing, a range of groups including the state, service managers and different segments in the profession have a stake in promoting EBP and there have been many discussions in literature as to how far EBP has been adopted by nursing. For the most part, this has concentrated on the barriers to its implementation and how these will be overcome. However, while there seems to be a broad agreement about the nature of the profession’s problems, the detail of this future vision of evidence-based nursing practice remains far from clear. Despite the attention given to the subject, there has been little discussion as to how EBP would be manifested in practice if barriers to its implementation could be resolved.