Scholarly pursuit in the clinical setting: an obligation of professional nursing

Scholarly pursuit in the clinical setting is an essential component of the development of nursing as a profession. All nurses have a professional obligation to participate in the generation and testing of nursing knowledge. The success of such scholarly efforts calls for collaboration between nursing education and nursing service, new partnerships between academicians and clinicians, and the development of an array of research participation skills. As in other practice disciplines, nursing has experienced difficulty in translating its research into the practice setting. The lack of relevance of research to clinical practice, and the historic separation of academia and service have slowed the growth of scholarly activities in the clinical setting. However, changing attitudes about nursing research are creating new opportunities for scholarly pursuit in the clinical setting. Successful clinical research programs foster new roles for researchers and demonstrate planned social change to support positive attitudes about research among nurses. This paper will also examine how a few of these new paths of scholarly pursuit have been operationalized in one setting.