Organizational culture and readiness for evidence‐based practice in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: A pre‐experimental study

Aim This study aims to establish postgraduate students’ perceptions of the organizational culture and readiness for evidence‐based practice of their workplaces in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Background Nurse shortages and a reliance on a transient nurse workforce have long been a challenge in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Developing a home‐grown nurse workforce, a key objective of the Government of Saudi Arabia, can help to address this. Evidence‐based practice offers a mechanism to address this. Evidence‐based practice implementation is heavily reliant on the prevailing organizational culture. Establishing the organizational culture and readiness for evidence‐based practice is crucial for sustainable evidence‐based practice implementation. Methods A pre‐experimental pilot study collected data from the same participants at three different points. As part of this, a questionnaire measuring organizational culture and readiness for evidence‐based practice was administered twice. Descriptive, inferential and correlational statistics were employed to analyse the data. Results Results demonstrated improved participant perceptions of the organizational culture and readiness for evidence‐based practice of their workplaces between the first (M = 76.58, SD = 19.2) and second (M = 92.10, SD = 23.68) data collection points, indicating moderate movement towards a culture of evidence‐based practice. Strengths, challenges and opportunities for improvement were identified. Conclusion This study established participants' perceptions of the organizational culture and readiness for evidence‐based practice of their workplaces, affording insight into context‐specific strategies to embed evidence‐based practice in health care organizations. Implications for Nursing Management Assessing an organization's culture and readiness for evidence‐based practice (EBP) can afford insight on the strengths, challenges and opportunities that exist to equip nurse managers to advance evidence‐based practice at individual, professional and organizational levels. This study demonstrated the importance of promoting an environment conducive to EBP and putting in place the necessary resources to support evidence‐based practice implementation. Nurse managers can play a central role in this.