Issues in Comprehensive Pediatric Nursing's quest for evidence to underpin child health nursing practice.

Clinicians in child health nursing practice will appreciate that journals such as Issues in Comprehensive Pediatric Nursing actively seek to contribute to the knowledge base of children’s nurses and other health care professionals who care for sick children. They do this by publishing peer reviewed original quantitative and qualitative research and among others, systematic reviews of the literature which are designed to illuminate and build the evidence base which underpins contemporary practice. Although evidence-based practice (EBP) has been part of the nursing nomenclature for a significant period of time it is actually a relatively new guiding principle within child health care. It was Sackett et al (1997) who were among the early pioneers of what is now referred to as the evidence-based practice movement (Bick & Graham, 2010). Their definition ‘‘the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence about the care of individual patients’’ (Sackett et al, 1997 p 2) has since become the part of the philosophy of children’s and young