Research utilization in nursing practice — a pilot study

Abstract

A low research base and inadequate research utilization are seen as obstacles to acquiring credible professional status for nursing. During recent years there has been some debate, both in Europe and in North America, about the extent to which nurses base their practice on research. This paper reviews recent empirical studies about research utilization, then goes on to describe a small pilot study carried out in the UK to attempt to measure research utilization among general nurses at F/G grade. A large-scale, generalizable survey using similar methods is proposed to build on the knowledge gained from the pilot study. Tentative findings are put forward that show a positive attitude towards research among British clinical nurses. Specialist nurse advisors and research-based protocols are helpful to nurses in accessing research literature. The biggest deterrent to research utilization appears to be lack of perceived autonomy--some nurses feel unable to challenge medical colleagues and organizational managers and so fail to make use of research findings available to them. Significant differences are found between the two hospitals studied in the characteristics of their nursing staff, particularly in relation to their research awareness and degree of perceived autonomy.

To what extent do nurses use research in clinical practice? A systematic review

“…Of the included reports, 3 (5%) were rated as strong [27,76,86], 12 (22%) as moderate-strong [5,26,29,50-52,54-56,66,91,94], 23 (42%) as moderate-weak [9,24,33,49,53,61,68-70,72,73,77,78,80,81,83,84,87-89,92,95,96], and 17 (31%) as weak [4,57,59,60,63-65,67,71,74,75,79,82,85,90,97,98]. Discrepancies in quality assessment between reviewers related primarily to representativeness of the sample, treatment of missing data, and appropriateness of statistical tests, and were settled through consensus.…”

“…Ten articles (ten studies) [57,63,67-69,71,75,83,91,95] assessed nurses' use of research using the RUQ. The RUQ, developed by Champion and Leach [63], is a general measure of research use consisting of 42 self-descriptive statements comprising four subscales of which research utilization is one subscale.…”

“…The ten items are then summed and a mean is taken to obtain an overall research use score, with higher values indicating higher levels of research use. Eight [63,67-69,71,83,91,95] of the ten articles reported an overall score indicative of moderate-high research use. The remaining two articles [57,75] reported moderate-low research use scores.…”

“…The use of research in general was measured in 36 studies, including those in which the RUQ was used [57,63,67-69,71,75,83,91,95], studies that used other multi-item measures [73,74,85,87,90], single-item (past present and future) measures [4,59-61], the single-item Parahoo measure [9,24,78-81,86], and other single-item measures [58,72,77,82,88,89,92,96-98] (Table 2). Research use in general was found to range from low through to high use.…”

The relationship between characteristics of context and research utilization in a pediatric setting

“…Poor uptake of research in clinical practice has largely been attributed to individual characteristics such as a practitioner's inability to understand research (a lack of research skills and inadequate educational preparation), age, or attitude toward research [15-17]. Consequently, the majority of the research in the field has centred on trying to understand individual level barriers and facilitators to research utilization [18-22].…”