Doing clinical research: The challenges and benefits

Abstract

The need for research in practice is well documented within nursing and other health care disciplines. This acceptance is predicated on the belief that clinically applied research will inform and improve practice and health service delivery resulting in better outcomes for consumers and their families. Nurses, however, find doing clinical research challenging. This paper describes nurses' experiences of doing clinical research. The main challenges of doing clinical research arise from a culture that prioritises practice where nursing work is core business and there is the need to address immediate and short term goals. There are also problems associated with the use of research language amongst clinical nurses and ambiguity in relation to research role expectations. Lack of support and resources for doing research along with keeping up the momentum for a research project also pose significant challenges. The benefits of doing clinical nursing research include experiential learning that has the potential to lead to practice change and improved patient outcomes that are evidence based.

Orthopaedic nurses' attitudes towards clinical nursing research – A cross-sectional survey

“…This could suggest that nursing research is moving forward and is regarded as more relevant for clinical nurses. Through recent years a positive change has been seen in nurses' attitudes towards research (Akerjordet et al, 2012;Higgins et al, 2010) and there is a growing need for basic learning and an interest in increasing knowledge about research utilization (Chan et al, 2011). Although the majority of the nurses participating in our survey stated an interest in nursing research, the general interest among the total number of nurses invited to participate from the orthopaedic department was disappointingly low, since only 43 out of 87 nurses participated.…”

“…During recent decades awareness of evidencebased practice has increased in nursing and the need for practice-based research has been well documented (Higgins et al, 2010). Evidence-based practice was introduced and recommended in health policies in 1992 and derived from evidence-based medicine to increase the best practice for patient care and treatment (Carlson and Plonczynski, 2008).…”

“…Studies show how clinical nurses, who tend to be very interested in conducting research (Akerjordet et al, 2012), are motivated to expand their knowledge (Higgins et al, 2010;Tranmer et al, 2002) and have positive attitudes towards research in general (Akerjordet et al, 2012;Glacken and Chaney, 2004;Kajermo et al, 1998;McMaster et al, 2013). Akerjordet et al (2012) discovered, in their cross-sectional survey of 364 clinical nurses from a Norwegian university hospital that 40% had a positive attitude towards research and 56% wanted to increase their research competencies.…”

“…Although clinical nurses are predominantly portrayed as having a positive attitude to research, many studies conducted on their utilization and participation in nursing research focus on the nurses' self-perceived barriers and deficiencies with respect to pursuing research in the clinical setting (Adamsen et al, 2003;Akerjordet et al, 2012;Breimaier et al, 2011;Brown et al, 2010;Carlson and Plonczynski, 2008;Chan et al, 2011;Higgins et al, 2010;McMaster et al, 2013;Roxburgh, 2006). Breimaier et al (2011) conducted a selfreport questionnaire study of 1023 Austrian hospital nurses, and found three main barriers to research utilization to be lack of time (70%), lack of information and/or knowledge (46%) and lack of interest (26%).…”

Plan for a successful research day!

“…Researching the evidence informs nurses about best practices and improves patient outcomes. 1 But nurses who find research difficult to understand may feel unprepared to perform it. (See Why do nurses find research challenging?…”