Bridging the Academic Practice Divide to Improve Nursing Care and Knowledge

Nurse-generated research is the cornerstone of evidence-based practice (EBP) and continues to be a marker of nursing excellence, both nationally and globally(1). As the frontline care providers, nurses are exceptionally positioned to conduct translational research to transform healthcare and improve patient outcomes (2) . With a nursing shortage and a dearth of PhD prepared nurses, creating an environment to promote nursing research remains a challenge (3,4). Integrating nursing research into the practice environment is critical for improving patient care and advancing nursing science (5). To work towards this goal, our school of nursing began a partnership program with hospitals in our geographic area to hire PhD-prepared nurse scientists who are jointly appointed in the academic and practice setting.

The program began in 2014 with the hiring of a single nurse scientist who was jointly appointed in the school of nursing and a local healthcare network that includes several acute care and community hospitals. Two additional nurse scientists were added to that partnership in 2015 and 2016. Beginning in 2017, the program expanded to include a second large hospital network, an independent orthopedic hospital, and an independent cancer hospital, with one new nurse scientist hired in a jointly appointed role for each of these facilities. Two more PhD prepared nurses have been hired to begin in January of 2019, making the total of nurse scientists eight.

The major activities of the partnership programs vary to meet the needs of each hospital. Core functions of the program include providing direct support to clinical nurses who are engaged in research and scholarship, and providing didactic training to foster inquiry and develop skills for conducting research and translating evidence into practice. Supportive activities for research include mentoring nurses through the development of a research question, designing a study, writing a proposal, securing grant funding, obtaining institutional review board approval, collecting and analyzing data, and scholarly writing and dissemination. In addition, as part of the partnership, the school of nursing provides access to biostatisticians and healthcare reference librarians for nurses at the partnering hospitals.

To evaluate the feasibility of the program, for a 12-month period we tracked a number of metrics at 3 hospitals including: average response time, request volume, client satisfaction, IRB submitted protocols, and work products.(6).

Results exceeded expectations with an average 1-day request response time, 35 requests, 98% client satisfaction, a 367% increase in nurse led institutional review board (IRB) approved protocols from the previous 12-month period, and 2 publications in peer-reviewed journals.