Journal of Research in Nursing

Clinical academics are health professionals who provide direct patient care alongside engaging in health research. Despite the generally agreed consensus that such roles enhance evidence-based care, availability and uptake has been sporadic in non-medical professions. With no data readily available regarding general practice nurses undertaking clinical academic roles, there is a need to understand the barriers and enabling factors that impact general practice nurses considering or pursuing a clinical academic career.

This review aims to address the question ‘What are the barriers and enablers relevant to general practice nurses in the UK pursuing clinical academic careers?’ by providing an overview of the relevant existing literature and drawing out the implications for policy and practice.

Literature published in the past 10 years was systematically searched. Using agreed inclusion criteria, papers were first screened on titles and abstracts, with papers included at this stage reviewed as full texts.

Thirteen papers met the criteria for inclusion. The extraction and synthesis of findings allowed for the development of three themes: roles and responsibilities; embarking on a clinical academic career; and organisational research culture.

Findings suggest that infrastructure developments are required across higher education institutions and general practice organisations to bring about a cultural change to equip and empower general practice nurses to consider and pursue clinical academic careers.

Nurses and allied health professionals (AHPs) require skills and support to access, appraise, interpret and use research evidence in clinical practice. We describe the process of designing and implementing the Evidence in Practice (EiP) programme at a UK hospital.

Key stakeholders were engaged to identify learning needs and priorities in appraising and implementing research evidence. To address these, we designed a multi-strategy bespoke programme of activities.

The programme comprised the development of (a) a visual summary of a research paper, (b) five skills development masterclasses and (c) a six-month mentoring scheme to develop and implement plans for translating evidence into practice.

The programme overcame many of the traditional barriers (lack of access, skills and time) to increase engagement of nurses and AHP staff in accessing, reviewing and using evidence in clinical practice.

With clinical leadership support, it is feasible to use a multi-strategy approach to promote and enable nurses and AHPs to use evidence in clinical practice.

There are few opportunities for undergraduate nurses to undertake experiential learning about research design and conduct. The project aim was to implement and evaluate a placement to support the development of research knowledge and skills.

Establishment of a four-week placement, with allocation to a registered quality improvement/service evaluation project. Evaluation was obtained through questionnaires; student experience (pre, post and one year), supervisor experience and organisational impact (presentations, conference and grant submissions).

24 students (five cohorts) were allocated to 17 projects (2017–2019). 100% of students enjoyed the placement, gained research knowledge and insight into clinical care. At one year (n = 15), 88% of students would consider undertaking a service evaluation and 65% (n = 11) would consider further post-graduate study. All supervisors (n = 20) reported the initiative valuable for student development. All project results were shared with relevant local teams to enable service planning and results from five projects been presented at eight national and international conferences. Three projects have contributed directly to further research grant submissions.

The programme supports the development of undergraduate nurses to be research ready and facilitates organisations to address high-priority safety and quality topics. Further resources are required to be able to increase placement capacity.

Integrative reviews within healthcare promote a holistic understanding of the research topic. Structure and a comprehensive approach within reviews are important to ensure the reliability in their findings.

This paper aims to provide a framework for novice nursing researchers undertaking integrative reviews.

Established methods to form a research question, search literature, extract data, critically appraise extracted data and analyse review findings are discussed and exemplified using the authors’ own review as a comprehensive and reliable approach for the novice nursing researcher undertaking an integrative literature review.

Providing a comprehensive audit trail that details how an integrative literature review has been conducted increases and ensures the results are reproducible. The use of established tools to structure the various components of an integrative review increases robustness and readers’ confidence in the review findings.

Novice nursing researchers may increase the reliability of their results by employing a framework to guide them through the process of conducting an integrative review.

The Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a significant burden on global healthcare systems. Nurses, midwives and health visitors remain critical to the rapid responses and innovative solutions required. Their views, however, on priorities for research is mainly muted, necessitating greater clarity to inform research that benefits patients and families across the life course.

To identify priorities for research in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and ‘beyond’, as recommended by nurses, midwives and health visitors across the four countries of the United Kingdom (UK).

A cross-sectional, web-based survey design was conducted (5th May-4th June 2020). In addition to the completion of demographic information, respondents identified up to three research areas important to their clinical care/practice in the context of COVID-19 and beyond. Data were imported for analysis into NVivo 12 (QSR International). Descriptive analysis was used to summarise the demographic variables. Free text responses were analysed using a semantic, inductive thematic analysis approach.

In total 1,296 responses were received from a self-selected sample of predominantly of female, registered nurses of white British ethnicity, located in England and working for acute care providers, providing 3,444 research priority recommendations. Four higher-order themes emerged, (1) New and unknown frontiers; (2) Care and treatment solutions; (3) Healthcare leadership and inclusive workforce; and (4) Emotional and mental health impact.

At a time of significant global uncertainty, the collective voice of nursing, midwifery and health visiting is never more important to inform clinical research. Whilst generalisability is limited by the homogeneity of the sample, this is the first survey to elicit the priorities for research in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond from nurses, midwives and health visitors in the UK. Novel findings developed through a rigorous analytical approach illuminate areas that require both urgent and long-term attention and provide a platform to direct priority refinement, future research and the basis for evidence translation.

With epidemics emerging at a hastened pace, a phenomenological study allows researchers to cast aside their perceptions to understand nurses’ lived experiences, and from there to discover previously unavailable insights at the epicentre of a pandemic.

To understand volunteer nurses’ lived experiences in Wuhan.

A descriptive phenomenological study with a purposive sampling strategy was used to describe volunteer nurses’ experiences in Wuhan. Interviews continued until data saturation. Ten semi-structured interviews of 30 to 60 minutes duration were conducted from 27 to 30 March 2020. The narrative data were audiotaped, transcribed and analysed using Colaizzi’s method.

Four themes emerged: mission and challenges denoted the participants’ realisation of the grim challenges ahead; challenges called for actions that described the concerted actions through partnerships and familial bonds; caring acts from all around revealed an external support system; and actions that made a difference portrayed the interplay of actions with feelings, thoughts and further actions to accomplish the mission.

This phenomenological study showed the interplay of nurses’ intentions and actions, and ‘actions speak louder than words’ when nurses were motivated by workmates’ actions to change their feelings, thoughts and actions. The concerted efforts can be used to develop educational programmes, management strategies and institutional policy on structure, system and resource utilisation, as well as dissemination of scientific knowledge to global healthcare workers and the public.