Australia’s Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) Database is a key resource for evidence-based practice in nursing that is probably less well known and well used than it deserves. JBI was founded at Australia’s Royal Adelaide Hospital in 1996 as an evidence-based nursing training organization and is named for that hospital’s first matron who served between 1849 and 1866.

Over its two decade history, JBI has become a significant producer in its own right of evidence-based research, including its own journal The JBI Database of Systematic Reviews and Evidence Reports, which publishes reviews produced according to the Institute’s methodology. JBI also produces a wide range of summarized and appraised evidence such as guideline and evidence summaries suitable for rapid dissemination within health systems, consumer health information, and other types of report. JBI’s EBP database, which collects their various types of work, is integrated into the library’s OVID/Medline interface, allowing simultaneous search of their resources along with a variety of trusted biomedical and health science sources.

One significant difference between JBI content and that from other significant EBP research producers and guideline developers is a significant consideration of types of evidence beyond the exclusively quantitative, something that may be particularly appealing to nurse scientists and researchers. Evaluation of the strength of evidence in JBI may include consideration of significance and meaningfulness to the patient experience, cultural appropriateness for the study population, and other qualitative considerations.

JBI is a leading producer of high-quality reviews and meta-syntheses of qualitative evidence, using ethnographic and thematic synthesis approaches to analyze human behavior and experience within social and phenomenological interpretations, to inform how health interventions and treatment approaches can be made more effective. Its unique approach and highly developed and rigorous methodology, which includes integrated evidence synthesis tools such as SUMARI, are an important resource for nursing in particular and the health sciences in general.

If you are interested in learning more about JBI, please reach out to Richard James at rjame@upennedu, or Sherry Morgan at semorgan@upenn.edu, the nursing librarians.

See also our recent post about CINAHL, the Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature.