Nursing research is research that provides evidence used to support nursing practices. Nursing, as an evidence-based area of practice, has been developing since the time of Florence Nightingale to the present day, where many nurses now work as researchers based in universities as well as in the health care setting.
Nurse education places emphasis upon the use of evidence from research in order to rationalise nursing interventions. In England and Wales, courts may determine whether or not a nurse acted reasonably based upon whether or not their intervention was supported by research.
Nursing research falls largely into two areas:
- Quantitative research is based in the paradigm of logical positivism and is focused upon outcomes for clients that are measurable, generally using statistics. The dominant research method is the randomised controlled trial.
- Qualitative research is based in the paradigm of phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography and others, and examines the experience of those receiving or delivering the nursing care, focusing, in particular, on the meaning that it holds for the individual. The research methods most commonly used are interviews, case studies, focus groups and ethnography
Recently in the UK, action research has become increasingly popular in nursing.
Famous quotes containing the words nursing and/or research:
“Dearest Lord, may I see you today and every day in the person of your sick, and, whilst nursing them, minister unto you. Though you hide yourself behind the unattractive disguise of the irritable, the exacting, the unreasonable, may I still recognize you, and say: “Jesus, my patient, how sweet it is to serve you.””
—Mother Teresa (b. 1910)
“The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?” [Was will das Weib?]”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)