Future trends in

nursing Research

T.J.M.
PROF. SR .THERESE JOSE S.H. MSc.
(N),M.B.A. Pursuing PHD
VICE-PRINCIPAL
HOLY FAMILY COLLEGE OF NURSING
THODUPUZHA.

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Factors to be understood to facilitate nursing research

-The vision and importance of nursing research as a scientific

basis for the health of the public
-The scope of nursing research
-The cultural environment and work force required for cutting
edge and high impact nursing research

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-The importance of a research intensive environment for faculty
and students
-The challenges and opportunities impacting the nursing
research of the discipline and profession

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 MAJOR SHIFT IN THE DELIVERY OF HEALTH CARE

• Emphasis on reducing health disparities

• Focus on health promotion and risk reduction
• Increased severity of illness in inpatient settings

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• Increased incidence of chronic illness
• Expanding number of elderly people
• Emphasis on provider accountability through focus on
quality and cost outcomes
• Use of technology to provide human needs.

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Trends in health care
1. Collaborative studies done by nurse researchers and nurse
educators will increase critical thinking skills of nursing
students.
2. Development of a scientific knowledge base will enable
nurses to implement evidence-based practice.

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3. Collaborative efforts will increase among health care
providers to identify best practices.

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4. Increased funding of NINR studies using a variety of
methodologies such as outcomes research will generate a
strong scientific base for nursing practice.
5. Nurse researchers will identify the relationship between
registered nurse staffing levels and client outcomes.

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6. Research focus on health promotion and illness prevention
interventions will be in keeping with the agenda of Healthy
People 2010

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“ Nursing research has much to
celebrate and much to accomplish as

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we stand at the beginning of a new
millennium”
(Grady, 2000)

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NINR RESEARCH THEMES
1. Changing lifestyle behaviors for better health.
2. Managing the effects of chronic illness to improve quality of
life.
3. Identifying effective strategies to reduce health disparities

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4. Harnessing advanced technologies to serve human needs
5. Enhancing the end of life experience for patients and their
families

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Elements of future nursing research
1. Ethnic and cultural sensitivities
2. Family and community considerations
3. Multidisciplinary research approaches
4. Biological and behavioral mechanisms ad their

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interrelationships
5. The clinical setting in which care is provided
6. Cost effectiveness of research interventions

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For ensuring an effective nursing research

1. Create a research culture

2. Provide quality educational programmers to prepare a
workforce for nurse scientists
3. Develop a sound research infrastructure

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4. Obtain sufficient funding for essential research

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Future Trends of research
1. Heightened focus on EBP
 Concerted efforts to practice
 use research findings in practice
 nurses at all levels will be encouraged to engage in evidence

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based patient care.
Improvements will be needed both in the quality of nursing
studies and nurses skills.
Interest in ‘Translational Research’

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2. Development of a stronger evidence base through rigorous
methods and multiple confirmatory strategies
Strong research designs are essential.
 Confirmation is usually needed through the replication of studies.
 Multisite studies by researchers in several site locations.

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3. Greater emphasis on systematic integrative reviews
 Systematic reviews are considered a cornerstone of EBP
The emphasis in a systematic review is on amassing
comprehensive research

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Information on the topic weighing pieces of evidence
Integrating information to draw conclusions about the state of
evidence .
Best practice clinical guidelines typically rely on such
systematic reviews.

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4. Expanded local research in health care settings
 There is likely to be an increase of small localized research
designed to solve immediate problems.
 Mechanisms will need to be developed to ensure that
evidence from these small projects becomes available to

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others facing similar problems.

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5. Strengthening of multidisciplinary collaboration
o Interdisciplinary collaboration of nurses with researchers in related
fields
o Address the fundamental problems at the bio-behavioral and
psychobiologic interphase.

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6. Expanded dissemination of research findings
• The internet and other means of electronic communication
• Electronic location and retrieval of research articles, on line
publishing

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• On line resources such as Lippincott’s nursing centre. Com,
email, and electronic mailing lists information about
innovations

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7. Increasing the visibility of nursing research
 Most people are unaware that nurses are scholars and
researchers.
 Nurse researchers internationally must market themselves and
their research to professional organizations, consumer

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organizations, governments, and the corporate world to
increase support for their research.

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8. Increased focus on cultural issues and health disparities
• Central concern in nursing and other health disciplines
• Raised consciousness about the ecological validity and
cultural sensitivity of health interventions.

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Ecological validity- refers to the extent to which study designs
and findings have relevance and meaning in a variety of real
world contexts.

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• There is growing awareness that research must be sensitive to
- the health beliefs,
- behaviors
- epidemiology

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- values of culturally and linguistically diverse populations
• Meeting the health care needs of an increasingly diverse
society
• A more globalized world has become an international concern.

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Research trends in social aspects

• Slowing down of population growth

• Falling share of Europe in the world population
• Aging and its impact on social systems
• Migration flows

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• New approaches to the urban habitat
Pace and forms of social exchange
• Advances in the field of biotechnologies
• Focus on political issues

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• The crisis of traditional political representation
• New intersections between the political and the religious
• The transformation of the mode of governance
• Characteristic of welfare systems

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• New understandings of very long-term change.
• The emphasis placed on the role of intangibles in the so-called
knowledge economy will increase researchers’ interest in
human, social and cultural capital, in the experience economy,
and in measures of value

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• Social welfare will be reconsidered as a productive factor
• With the current economic crisis issues of financial stability
and economic governance are also coming back to the fore.
• Research on Citizenship will maintain a focus on issues of
constitutionalism and formal citizenship

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• Issues of religious, sexual, scientific, biological citizenship are
promising lines of research in this area.

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Research trends in public relations
• Nursing roles must change to meet the public's demand for us
in the future.
• The public wants to know that the nurses who are pro viding
care are competent
• There is a tsunami of people coming into the healthcare

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system at the upper echelons of age, with multiple diagnoses
and chronic conditions.
• Need to reshape the healthcare system so that we can
intervene outside of the traditional sick care system.

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Research trends in psychology
 Because psychology is a science, the scientific method is
stressed in a variety of psychology courses.
 Undergraduate psychology majors are also required to take
courses in research methods
 Since those courses help build the foundation for

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understanding and contributing to the science of psychology.

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• The internet has provided greater access to research.
• The future of psychology, however, may depend on how well
psychology maintains its scientific roots while meeting the
needs of the public and adapting to a changing technological
world.

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RESEARCH TRENDS IN NURSING EDUCATION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

• Developing and testing more efficient educational processes

• Identifying new ways to incorporate technology in order to enhance
learning

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• Discovering more effective approaches to promoting lifelong
learning and commitment to leadership.

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• New strategies for recruiting and retaining bright young men and
women from diverse educational and cultural backgrounds into
nursing must be developed and tested.
• New models of nursing education are needed to prepare nurses for
faculty and research positions earlier in their careers.
• These efforts must assume top priority if nursing research is to
continue to evolve.

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• The lack of recognition and funding for this type of research has
greatly impaired progress in this area.

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Significant Advances in Nursing Science
and Research

• New trend in nursing education

• An integral part of the scientific enterprise of improving the
nation's health.

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• A scientific basis for patient care
• Should be regularly used by the nation's 2.5 million nurses.

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At the dawn of the 21st century and the long-awaited new
millennium,
• nurse educators face a rapidly changing health care landscape.

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• shifting student and patient demographics
• an explosion of technology.
• the globalization of health care, in addition to a myriad of
everyday challenges.

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The Future of Nursing Education reports make numerous
suggestions for how to improve the standard nursing
curriculum. Two of these suggestions are
(1) Moving toward competency-based learning
(2) Widespread introduction of inter professional education.

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The expectations and competencies of graduates at
each level of nursing education in regard to research

Baccalaureate programs
•  Prepare nurses with a basic understanding of the processes of
research.

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• Graduates can understand and apply research findings from nursing
and other disciplines in their clinical practice.
• They understand the basic elements of evidence-based practice,
• Can work with others to identify potential research
problems&collaborate on research teams.

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Master's programs 
 Prepare nurses to evaluate research findings and to develop
and implement evidence-based practice guidelines.
 Their leadership skills enable them to form and lead teams
within their agencies and professional groups.

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 They identify practice and systems problems that require
study,
 And they collaborate with scientists to initiate research.

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Practice-focused doctoral programs
•  prepare graduates for the highest level of nursing practice beyond
the initial preparation in the discipline.
• Graduates obtain the highest level of practice expertise integrated
with the ability to translate scientific knowledge into complex
clinical interventions tailored to meet individual, family and
community health and illness needs.

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• In addition, these professionals use advanced leadership
knowledge and skills to evaluate the translation of research into
practice and collaborate with scientists on new health policy
research opportunities that evolve from the translation and
evaluation processes.
• They are prepared to focus on the evaluation and use of research
rather than the conduct of research.

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Research-focused doctoral programs 
• prepare graduates to pursue intellectual inquiry and conduct
independent research for the purpose of extending knowledge.
• Graduates are expected to plan and launch an independent
program of research, seek needed support for initial phases of the
research program, and begin to involve others (i.e., students,
clinicians, and other researchers) in that work.

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Postdoctoral programs
 provide graduates from research-focused doctoral programs not
only with a period of time devoted fully to further developing
research skills, but the opportunity to establish their research
program with the formal mentorship of senior investigators.
Formal postdoctoral study generally ensures that an individual's
research program is firmly launched before facing the multiple

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demands of any academic, clinical, or administrative position.

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 AACN's Indicators of Quality in Research-Focused Doctoral
Programs in Nursing (2001)

productive research faculty who are at the cutting edge of their field
of inquiry;
• environment in which mentoring, socialization of students, and a

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community of scholars is evident;
• coherent and well-designed programs of study, including
opportunities for interdisciplinary study and research;

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• adequate infrastructure and resources
• highly qualified and motivated students.
• The next stage of development in nursing research

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encompasses the creation of highly dynamic research
environments that enable a greater proportion of faculty to
excel as scientists, in that the volume and quality of their work
has a substantial influence on health care.

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Such environments are characterized by the following attributes:
o an increasing number of positions in which faculty
concentrate almost entirely on research,
o research mentorship and research leadership;
o balancing of teaching, research, and service missions across

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the school as a whole rather than within individual faculty
activities;
o inclusion of students at all educational levels directly in faculty
research

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Nevertheless, future progress may be impeded by two
worrisome trends:
1) most nursing doctorates are earned much later in life than is
true in other disciplines, thus shortening the time available for
an active research career 

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2) production of new nurse faculty (and in particular, new
nurse scientists) is far behind what is needed now and in the
future. 

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• The shortage of doctor ally prepared faculty will continue to
exert a negative effect on nursing's research agenda well into
the future by severely limiting the pool of available nurse
scientists
• straining the human and fiscal resources necessary for the

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conduct of research
• creating circumstances in which new investigators will have
difficulty in establishing and maintaining productive research
programs.

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Research trends in nursing practice
• Trends in nursing are closely tied to what is happening to
health care in general
• Nursing research provides the scientific basis for the practice
of the profession.
• Using multiple philosophical and theory-based approaches as

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well as diverse methodologies, nursing research focuses on
the understanding and easement of the symptoms of acute
and chronic illness;
• Prevention or delayed onset of disease or disability, or slowing
the progression thereof;
• Finding effective approaches to achieve and sustain optimal
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• Improvement of the clinical settings in which care is provided
• The critical societal issues that influence the direction of
nursing research usually flow from individual- and population-
based health determinants.
• Such health determinants are multi -factorial in nature,
including:

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[Link] physical environment for work and life;
2. Behaviors of individuals, families, and communities
3. Biologic factors including genetic predisposition to health
problems;
4. Social factors including socioeconomic position and resources;
[Link] factors and the availability of social networks
as well as access to and use of various health services 42
The two overarching goals are:
• Helping individuals of all ages to increase life expectancy and
improve their quality of life.
• Eliminating health disparities among different segments of the
population in the United States.

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RESEARCH TRENDS IN THE PROFESSION OF NURSING

 Nursing, as a profession, is at a critical juncture that requires

us to analyze this transformation, recognize the opportunities
and take appropriate action.
 The choices we make today will determine if and what the
role (destiny) of nursing will be in the health care arena of the

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future.

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• According to Slaughter (1995), “The path to human destiny is
not only found in science, machines and rationality but more
importantly requires foresight and the pursuit of wisdom.”
• Foresight and the pursuit of wisdom require us to ask three
questions: Where have we come from? Where are we going?

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How can we get there

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• Slaughter (1995) suggests the future is in our hands and it is
time to go forward with it.
• The foresight process begins by deciding exactly what the
nursing profession should evolve into and then putting in place
the means to achieve it.

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• Nurse researchers study how to assist individuals and
groups as they respond to health and illness experiences
(e.g., reducing side effects of illness and treatment) and
address social and behavioral aspects of illness and quality
of life.
• Much nursing research is bio behavioral in nature, seeking
to understand the relationships among biological,
behavioral, psychological, and sociological factors.

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RESEARCH TRENDS IN NURSIG SERVICE AND ADMINISTRATION

• Nursing research on health systems and outcomes seeks to

identify ways that the organization and delivery of health care
influence quality, cost, and the experience of patients and
their families.
• While research on such topics is not exclusive to any single

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discipline, nursing has a particular focus that brings important
balance to the health and biomedical research agenda for the
nation.

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• Has increased the demand for nurse researchers to broaden
their understanding of the research continuum to include the
development of knowledge and skills in health services
research.
• This area of research is supported largely by the Agency for

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Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and provides
evidence on which to base clinical practice.

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