Nurses’ Perceptions of Barriers to Research Utilization in Clinical Practice in Sabah, Malaysia

Background/Objectives: Evidence-based practice (EBP) has been widely adopted in clinical nursing practice, with nursing education efforts consistently emphasizing its importance in strengthening implementation efforts. Despite these efforts to promote translational research, the level of evidence-based practice (EBP) implementation in clinical nursing practice remains unsatisfactory. This study aimed to explore the barri-ers to research utilization in clinical settings, as perceived by nurses in Malaysia. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2019 using the BARRIERS Scale, a validated tool that measures perceived barriers to research utilization across four do-mains: organizational barriers, nurses' research awareness and values, quality of re-search, and research communication. The study involved nurses from five tertiary hospitals in Sabah, Malaysia. Results: A total of 562 nurses participated in the study, with a mean age of 34.3 years (SD = 7.96) and mean duration of clinical practice of 10.0 years (SD = 7.58). Half of the nurses (53.9%) had a moderate understanding of EBP. Using the BARRIERS questionnaire, the top three prominent barriers perceived by nurses were ‘the nurse does not feel she/he has enough authority to change patient care procedures’(35.9%), ‘the nurse does not have time to read research’ (27.8%), and ‘re-search reports/articles are not published fast enough’ (25.8%). Among the four do-mains, organizational barriers scored highest (mean=2.7, SD=0.72), followed by re-search communication (mean=2.6, SD=0.73). Conclusions: The study findings em-phasize the challenges nurses encounter in integrating research into clinical practice and highlight the need for ongoing efforts to promote evidence-based practice and re-search utilization among nurses in Sabah while addressing the identified gaps.