Abstract
More than 15 years ago I attended an International Council of Nurses conference. North American feminists and journalists Bernice Buresh and Susanne Gordon had a powerful message for their nursing audience: they argued why nurses should and how they could get their research and voice heard in the public domain and through the media. Their message struck a chord: their analysis showed that the problem lay not just in a lack of interest in nurses from the media, but in that there was also a clear reticence in the nursing profession to engage with the media and speak to the public at large. This had been my experience too. I have been the professional lead at the Royal College of Nursing of the United Kingdom (RCN) working with the RCN Research Society for more than 20 years. We have held a nursing research conference every year throughout my tenure. I, like Buresh and Gordon (2000), firmly believe that ‘patients, families and the health care system, can only reap the benefits of research done by nurses if that research is disseminated and publicised beyond the nursing community’ (Buresh and Gordon, 2000: 261). The sharing of research at an RCN conference was surely an ideal platform for researchers to disseminate their research more widely. However, 20 years ago I found that the majority of nurse researchers were extremely reluctant to engage in any media work related to their research. That picture has changed dramatically over the years, and since the advent of social media the level of activity to secure public engagement has increased exponentially. The beauty of social media is that it gives the researcher an unmediated and immediate voice. The fear of being misquoted or having your research misrepresented by a third party is taken away, and perhaps as a consequence many more researchers are engaging more with the public at large. Of course, such technological developments are only an enabler of engagement; there have also been policy drivers that may well have influenced this behavioural change. For instance, it is now the norm in healthcare research in the UK that there is explicit public and patient involvement in the research process, and public and patient involvement is now almost universally a funding requirement. This, coupled with the requirement that researchers must demonstrate the impact of their research (Kelly et al., 2016), has led to innovative approaches to dissemination and engagement with those whom researchers seek to influence. For example, Brightlight (http://www.brightlightstudy.com) is a series of research studies that aim to answer the question: Do specialist services for teenage and young adults with cancer add value? The findings from the ‘young people’s experiences of care’ study were transformed into a performance by a theatre company and the production was performed by teenagers, many of whom had experienced cancer personally or with a family member. The company performed at this year’s RCN International Nursing Research Conference and their performance was heralded as an extremely powerful, moving, effective and inspiring means of communicating research findings. It had a lasting impact.
The imperative to demonstrate the impact of research has brought the requirement to influence stakeholders through research into sharp focus. It is not an easy task, whether researchers would seek to influence those who receive services such as patients, those who provide services such as healthcare professionals, or those who create the context in which services are provided such as policy makers – or indeed a combination of all three. It therefore gives me great pleasure to introduce this edition of JRN with a focus on ‘influence’. It brings together some ideas on how to influence through research. It takes its focus from this year’s RCN International Nursing Research Conference in which three keynote speakers were invited to consider whether health and social care research influences public policy. Our guest editorial is by Michael Traynor, the chair of the conference scientific committee. Traynor offers a critical reflection on whether nurse researchers are necessarily best placed to convince policy makers of the shape of the nursing workforce. He proposes that it is often researchers outside one’s own discipline who offer the most interesting insights. For me, Buresh and Gordon are a case in point. The editorial is followed by five papers and their associated reviews and the edition concludes with two Perspectives.
In the first paper Morley and Jackson encourage modern nurses to take inspiration from Florence Nightingale and issue a call to action to their fellow nurses to influence the conditions in which nursing is practised, through political activism. This paper was published online first in advance of the UK snap election, and a social media ‘Twitter chat’ was held to share the paper and engage in further discussion and debate in order to widen the influence of the paper beyond the traditional readership of a professional, peer reviewed, nursing journal. On this occasion the JRN Twitter chat was conducted in partnership with ‘weNurses’, a social media Twitter community with over 64,000 followers. You can catch up with the issues covered in the chat here (http://www.wecommunities.org/tweet-chats/chat-details/3004).
The second paper in this edition, by Adibelli and colleagues, considers nurses’ attitudes towards specialisation in Turkey. The authors argue that the status and influence of nurses in Turkey is undermined by the lack of post-registration career pathways within a context that uses internal rotation, thereby not offering nurses an opportunity to consolidate training within a specialist area. For me, one of the most telling issues reported in this paper was a poor response rate attributed to potential respondents not believing the research(ers) were in a position to influence change, so they did not see the value of taking part in the research. The authors are to be commended for championing this agenda against the odds.
The third paper, by Mills and colleagues from Australia, examines three factors believed to impact on the retention of early career registered nurses, namely self-concept, practice environment and resilience. A global issue, examined from a novel multifactorial perspective in one location, offers useful insight into where and when these factors are most likely to influence an early career registered nurse’s intentions to stay. While the generalisability of these findings are tentative and the researchers highlight where more research would add value, they propose that their research offers the potential for more targeted retention strategies and provides particular pointers for those responsible for human resource policy.
The fourth paper, by Hagen et al. from the USA, describes a research dissemination strategy designed specifically to engage both scientific and lay audiences. Their strategy sought to reach beyond the traditional peer-reviewed journal and professional conference routes to dissemination. Sharing their experiences and lessons learned, the authors offer insight into how a stakeholder event can enable stakeholders to enhance the impact of research findings and influence future research priorities.
The final paper in this edition is from Taiwan. Chen, a head nurse in a neonatal intensive care unit, and her colleagues show how an educational intervention can influence the confidence and improve the attitude of paediatricians and paediatric nurses towards pain relief and symptom management in children receiving palliative care. This is a useful basis from which to assess the impact of this educational intervention on the actions of these clinicians in practice.
Two Perspectives conclude this edition. In the first, le May offers her perspective on the three keynotes speakers’ contribution to this year's RCN annual International Nursing Research Conference. She identifies the tactics each speaker used to influence policy-makers through their research and concludes by reminding us, lest we forget, that we do all of this for the purpose of improving public health and patient care. The concluding Perspective by Donaldson offers a reflective analysis of the contribution and impact of academic conferences. He suggests that the biggest impact is on a personal level, and argues that there is nothing that can fully replace the value of physically being there. Reflecting on my own experience, his analysis also strikes a chord for me. However, as conferences seldom take place ‘in Hilton hotels with no internet access’ these days, and technology allows us to digitise and curate conference presentations for further analysis and debate (https://www.rcn.org.uk/professional-development/research-and-innovation/research-events/rcn-2017-research-conference), I suggest that, like research, conferences are best viewed as part of a continuum if the potential of their influence is to be fully realised.
JRN is positioned at the interface of policy, practice and research. Our focus is on nurses, the practice of nursing and its impact, and the context in which nursing care is provided. Our aim is to inform and influence policy, practice and research. Whether you are a service user, a researcher, a practitioner or a policy maker, a doer or a user of research, JRN is the place for you to publish your work and voice your thoughts, either as papers, reviews, perspectives or guest editorials. If you prefer more immediate and succinct ways, join us on Twitter or Facebook. But whatever your preference, do not be shy; help nursing to continue to take Buresh and Gordon’s message forward because nurses should and can get their research and voice heard.