Issue on why nurses do not use more research in their practice

            The paper discusses the issue on why nurses do not use more research in their practice. Nursing should be a research-based (DHSS, 1972) due to its technicalities and that research should underpin nursing practice, nursing education and management (Nelson, 1995). Research is important to be integrated in nursing practices to improve the quality of nursing care.

            Despite of the importance of research in nursing, and the widely accepted research and recent findings, nurses do not use more research in their practice (Watt, 1993). Nurses tend to base their practice on traditions and cultural issues, organizational factors, individual resistance to implementation and problems with the research itself are the four general issues that prevent nurses from using research in practice (Closs &Cheater, 1994).

            There are some health organizations that are not characterized by a strong research culture and the organization appears to undervalue its importance (Closs and Cheater, 1994). When the entire organization itself does not promote awareness and use of research, then nurses within the organization follow that practice and ignore the use of research in their practices. Also, in a health environment, nurses tend to be more inclined with traditions rather than on new ways of doing things that are based on research.

            In addition, there is a wide physical and philosophical gap between research and practice (Haines & Jones, 1994). Much research is conducted in universities away from the practice setting and many researchers are able to assume only minimal clinical commitment (Mulhall, 1995). This statement is observably true. In universities, nursing students follow theories based on research but in hospitals, nurses usually follow what more senior nurses do which is usually based on traditions and experience thus improvement in nursing care tend to be slow.

            Long-standing organizational structure is also one of the underlying reasons why nurses fail to integrate research on their practice. First, implementation of new ideas based on research should be supported by the managers of a health organization and most managers failed to do so. Multiprofessional practice is also a factor. It can be observe that it is difficult for nurses to change practices involving other medical professionals (Funk et al, 1995) such as physicians, surgeons and others. For example, if anaesthetic or surgical instructions indicate an all-night fast prior to surgery and nurses know that a six- hour fast would be more appropriate, it is extremely difficult to adopt the correct policy (Tordoff, 1998).

Moreover, some nurses personally resist the use of research in their practice due to personal beliefs. Some individuals needed confirmation from a research before they practice the research themselves while some have different belief from a research study that is why they can not put the research on their practices (Rogers, 1994). In addition to that, nurses can only make decisions about the relevance of research findings in practice if they are able to analyze critically the raw material (Closs and Cheater 1994). Most nurses neither have the skills to search for the literature nor to interpret critically a research (Armitage, 1990; Hunt, 1990).

The practice of not putting research into practice can be changed by educating the nurses from the universities up to the sites of practice so that they can have enough skills to interpret research and put it into practice. Also, most health organization should be aware of this issue so that they can implement change within the organization. This issue is more of an organizational issue. Nurses are only a part of an organization and they can integrate research on their practices only up to a certain extent.

 

References:

Armitage S (1990) Research utilization in practice. Nurse Education Today

Closs SJ, Cheater FM (1994) Utilization of nursing research, culture, interest and

support. Journal of Advanced Nursing

Department of Health & Social Security (1972) The Briggs Report. Report on the

 Committee on Nursing. London, DHSS

Funk SG, Tornquist EM, Champagne MT (1995) Barriers and facilitators of

research. Nursing Clinics of North America

Haines A, Jones R (1994) Implementing findings of research.

British Medical Journal

Hunt J (1990) Towards research based practice. Nursing Standard. 4, 5

Mulhall A (1995) Nursing research, what difference does it make?

Journal of Advanced Nursing

Nelson D (1995) Research into research practice.

Accident and Emergency Nursing

Rogers S (1994) An exploratory study of research utilization by nurses in general

medical and surgical wards. Journal of Advanced Nursing

Tordoff C (1998) From research to practice: a review of the literature.

Nursing Standard. Vol. 12, No. 25

 

 

 

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