Clinical Translational Science Awards: opportunities and challenges for nurse scientists

On October 12, 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a request for applications entitled "Institutional Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA)," calling for proposals that "would assist institutions to form a uniquely transformative, novel, and integrative academic home for Clinical and Translational Science." The CTSA initiative challenged investigators from a broad array of disciplines, including nursing, to reconsider how they conduct research. The call for CTSA proposals emphasized the need for greater interaction and collaboration across disciplines. Twelve CTSA centers were funded in October of 2006, nine of which had schools of nursing. There is much to be learned from the experiences of the schools of nursing at universities that were recipients of the first round of CTSA funding. In this manuscript, we describe the role of nurse investigators in the development and subsequent implementation of the first round of CTSA grants. In addition to describing the various ways nurse researchers are participating in the currently funded CTSAs, we address the challenges and opportunities the CTSA initiative offers for advancing nursing science and the contributions of nurse researchers to interdisciplinary research teams. Data for the presentation come from a number of sources. In addition to reviewing the CTSA website for each of the funded centers, we obtained information from nursing faculty at the 9 CTSA centers with a school of nursing. Through e-mail exchanges and telephone conversations, we elicited data on the varying ways nursing faculty and administrators have been involved in the CTSA initiative, including proposal development and implementation. We also elicited information on notable successes and unique challenges of nurse investigators, as well as the advice that recipients would have for future schools of nursing involved in the CTSA initiative.