Develop spirit of research on the job: nurses told

Manipal, Nov 17 (UNI) Research must be a key component of nursing courses as nurses are under wrong impression that research is only for writing thesis, president of the Nursing Research Society of India (NRSI) Professor Reena Bose said today.

Inaugurating the two-day NRSI National Conference on 'Action Research-Bridging the gap between Nursing Theory and Nursing Practice', organised by the Manipal College of Nursing, Manipal University here, she said nurses have to realise that research was necessary to improve the quality of nursing care.

What better method could be applied to render better care than through simple research while working in the wards, she added.

The research to bridge the gap between nursing knowledge and practice was needed most in the present situation.

Health care was changing rapidly due to many reasons, one of them being change in disease scenario.

Though many infectious diseases have been eradicated, new ones were emerging due to change in lifestyle, new drug resistant diseases and those due to risky behaviour which has become more prevalent, like HIV.

She exhorted that nurses have an important role to play particularly in care and prevention of all these diseases. They can achieve this not by trial and error but scientifically.

Action research was one of the most important methods by which scientific care could be designed, she said, adding nursing has to advance evolving new paradigms.

The new millennium had set up a new era of nursing knowledge.

Practice and action research was one of the means through which nursing knowledge could be applied as new practice.

It also leads to evidence based quality care which was the aim of the nursing profession and the responsibility and obligation of each professional nurse was to strive for better knowledge and skill, she said.

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