Servant Leadership in Nursing: A framework for developing sustainable research capacity in nursing (original) (raw)

Building capacity for nurse-led research

International Nursing Review, 2009

Aim: To discuss factors that have influenced the development of research capacity among nurses in lower and middle-income countries (LMICs).Background: Concerned health scientists have addressed the importance of building research capacity among health professionals. Strengthening capacity specifically among LMIC nurses has been infrequently discussed. Without the requisite educational preparation or an enabling environment for research, nurses are unlikely to either demand research capacity-building opportunities or initiate research examining nursing practice and health system challenges.Methods: A scan was conducted of nine internationally funded research capacity-building initiatives to identify programme targeting and the proportion of nurse trainees. A literature review examined graduate and post-graduate training opportunities for LMIC nurses, and barriers and enablers to nurses' involvement in research. Informal consultations were held with nurse leaders in 15 LMICs and leaders of eight LMIC nursing organizations.Findings: The scan found a generic targeting of health professionals with a very low percentage of nurse trainees. Programmes specifically targeting nurses did attract and prepare a significant number of nurses. Factors limiting nurses' involvement in research include hierarchies of power among disciplines, scarce resources, a lack of graduate and post-graduate education opportunities, few senior mentors, and prolonged underfunding of nursing research.Conclusions: Fully engaging LMIC nurses in health services research may yield pragmatic and evidence-informed service delivery and policy recommendations. Investments in supports for nursing research capacity may enrich global health policy effectiveness and improve quality of care.

Exercising the nursing imagination: putting values and scholarship back into research

Journal of Research in Nursing, 2016

The number of published nursing research papers has increased exponentially over the past 20 years, partly due to the pressures placed on academics by universities to ‘publish or perish’. Nursing research has become an end in itself, largely divorced from the aims of theory building and practice development, and research findings are accumulating at an alarming and unwieldy rate. This discussion paper explores some of the possible reasons for this shift in the focus of the academic role and calls for a return to scholarship and a far broader understanding of the purpose and practice of research as a form of intellectual craftsmanship. In order to gain a fuller and deeper understanding of the human condition and human suffering necessary for compassionate care, nurse researchers, practitioners and academics need to develop the ‘nursing imagination’ through reflective writing, collaborative inquiry, the arts, humanities, novels and poetry. We should be guided in our research according...