Paper
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Service and Faculty Partnerships: The Nurse Scientist Program at Kaiser Permanente
Linda Searle Leach, PhD, RN, CNAA, School of Nursing, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Scientific inquiry in nursing is essential for the continuing advancement of nursing as a discipline (Bunkers, 2000). Research mentoring is a critical strategy to promote nursing research. The need to develop and test strategies that can address the gap between research and practice among nurses is a significant priority (Hutchinson and Johnston, 2006). The purpose of this presentation is to describe the Nurse Scientist Program that was developed and is currently being implemented at Kaiser Permanente. This program partners nursing faculty with nurses in the clinical setting to promote their professional development so that nursing care can be based upon the best available research evidence. The International Council of Nurses (ICN) in their position statement on nursing research identifies this goal as a professional obligation for nurses (ICN, 1999). One of the barriers to research use by nurses, reported by Nilsson Kajermo et al (1998), is that the nurse is isolated from colleagues with research expertise. Hospitals and ambulatory care settings often do not have the resources to engage in developing and conducting nursing research studies that are needed to guide practice improvements. Moreover, nursing faculty with the expertise to do so need access to patients and clinical settings to uncover clinical nursing problems and generate nursing research studies. The Nurse Scientist Program is an endeavor that matches the needs of health care organizations with resources in their community to advance nursing research. The Nurse Scientist Program has four components: The selection process, the role/position description, goals and contribution to the healthcare organization, and evaluation. The selection process, review of the applicant’s dossier, how this non-paid formal appointment provides access to the organization and tools from these four components will be shared to show how this program can be implemented successfully.