Supporting Senior Nursing Students Transition to Lifelong Researchers

A Nursing Research course is an essential beginning for introducing students to evidence-based practice. As nurses, a lifelong expectation is that to improve and provide the best possible care to patients, one must utilize basic efforts in reviewing and applying evidence to guide decision/practice. The impression that research was not a skill, therefore; not an important course was identified as a conceptual problem with nursing students. With that information, a change in the nursing research course was implemented. The new mission of the nursing research course was to have the students to experience the real research process. This writing and speaking intensive course not only introduced methodology of investigation, including evaluation of existing and on-going research studies in nursing and health care but also aided the students in combining theoretical and empirical knowledge in developing evidenced-based nursing research. Initiate scientific and creative methods of problem solving to explore, evaluate, and select solutions to challenging research situations were identified in the beginning as barriers.

Students were challenged to start the research process from the beginning, utilizing the PICO process, and developed an individual research project. This included, the students' learning the steps in developing a research proposal, the varies types of sources, and skills recommended for literature reviews. A systematic review had to be completed. A local librarian from the university conducted a workshop on accessibility of resources and databases utilizations. Students were required to peer-review each step of the process. The results of the project, the students presented a poster presentation at the end of the course during the annual “Excellence in Nursing” day sponsored by the nursing department and the local chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing. The research process, samples of the project at various points- at the beginning, midway, and the final project will be presented. The growth of the students will be illustrated along with the students’ appreciation of the research process to evidence-based nursing practice will also be presented.