The Research Thread

Abstract

We live in a time of rapidly expanding knowledge and technology, a fact which has great implications for health professions such as nursing. Now more than ever nurses need to work at keeping abreast of developments which affect their practice. Because of such fundamental considerations as these, the decision was made to include an emphasis on research in the nursing course being discussed in this issue of this journal. The inclusion of research was conceived as fulfilling a twofold purpose directly related to the nurse's need to grow as her profession grows. First, since more and more research is being done in nursing today, it follows that research reports are forming an increasingly large proportion of nursing literature. In order for nurses to use this literature intelligently as a basis for practice, they must be able to evaluate the research methodology involved. The findings of a study are only as sound as the methods used to obtain them. Thus the inclusion of research in a basic nursing program helps to prepare intelligent, critical consumers of nursing literature.