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My Opinion: Why Nurses Need Nursing Research

It seems strange that a site for professional nurses pays very little attention to nursing research.

Nursing research is how we prove or disprove that our practice works and what makes us different from other professionals such as doctors and psychologists.

Most professional sites have research and publications sections where you can search for recent updates in practice e.g. <a href = “http://www.bma.org.uk/” TARGET="_blank"> British Medical Association, <a href = “http://www.bacp.co.uk/about_bacp/profile_history.php” TARGET="_blank">British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

However in nursing we are not very good at saying how good we actually are.

This leads to the accusation that we are semi professional, vocational e.g. we do the job because we care, or just doing what is expected of a largely female workforce. The feminine quality of nursing care provision can be, and is, provided by men as well as women, but it is often a silent or invisible aspect to our work. Whereas many of the more valued aspects are thought to be masculine traits e.g. managing, educating, budgeting and task allocation.

In order to address the balance nurses need to be able to make more evident what they do and that it works. This evidence not only proves our worth, as one of the largest workforces in the country, but also as individuals going about our daily practice, sometimes in very difficult circumstances.

If nursing is to survive in a country where market forces dictate cost and quality as being the two main drivers then we have to prove that it is more cost effective to employ a qualified nurses over a unqualified nurses, and that nurses contribute to a faster recovery rate than if people were not provided with qualified nursing care.

We may already be too late as many NHS and private health care facilities are replacing qualified nurses with non qualified staff. If there are qualified nurses in post they may be there to manage risk and the work of the non qualified staff. This is a masculine task as outlined before and while very important it is not what qualified nurses enter the profession to do and a reason why many of them leave.

Nursing research is the only way to provide evidence of effectiveness and efficiency. Using research from other professions does not prove that nursing in itself works. Nurses need to ensure that research they read and carry out is actually focused on nursing and not about practices that are not directly related to their work such as drug treatments, surgical procedures or psychotherapy.

This is a difficult task, as we currently rely quite heavily on the research of other professions to carry out our work and they should not be ignored completely as this would be dangerous. What is needed to address the balance is more nursing research in the things that nurses do best supported by the research from other professions. These basic often invisible tasks are very often taken for granted as anyone can do them such as hygiene, diet, rest, diversity of needs and even observation and restraint. These everyday tasks require the nurse to be ever vigilant to changes however small and in addressing the balance to ensure that health is promoted at all times.

If nurses do not start paying attention to what they do best then it will not be very long before they are replaced by people, or machines, that are task orientated and mechanical operators of health and life. This will be a sorry day for nursing as it will be the day that cost overrides quality in nursing practice.

Some suggested links for nursing research:
<a href = “http://www.icn.ch/index.html” TARGET="_blank"> International Council of Nurses Geneva Switzerland
<a href = “http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/nursing/nnrul” TARGET="_blank">National Nursing Research Unit King’s College London
<a href = “http://nurseresearcher.rcnpublishing.co.uk/index.asp” TARGET="_blank">Nurse Researcher Online Journal
<a href = “http://www.rcn.org.uk/development/researchanddevelopment” TARGET="_blank">RCN Research and Development
<a href = “http://www.nursingtimes.net” TARGET="_blank">Nursing Times
<a href = “http://nursingstandard.rcnpublishing.co.uk” TARGET="_blank"> Nursing Standard

Some good points here from Marjorie and we will be making an effort to include more nursing research in future. Please do add comments below to discuss Marjorie’s ideas further.

If you would like to write an article about something you feel strongly about please contact Russ via his ProNurse profile. ProNurse will edit the article and insert relevant links for you and get your final approval before publication.

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