A Nursing Research Committee Within an Acute Care Setting: Its Inception and Development

Abstract

RATIONALE FOR NURSING RESEARCH COMMITTEE The Nursing Department of the Montreal Children's Hospital formed a Nursing Research Committee in the spring of 1979. There were five major reasons for this development. First, there was felt to be a need for nursing research in acute care settings which has direct relevance for nursing practice. This did not discount the value of nursing research in other settings, or research by other disciplines, but rather recognized a specific vacuum. Nurses whose practice takes place in acute care settings may have unique problems for nursing research that arise from their daily experience, rather than from the literature, where their university-based colleagues may first identify an area for research. Johnson (1974), among others, has emphasized the distinctiveness of nursing research which has as its focus, living and coping with circumstances and environments to promote healthy adaptation, rather than the causative-curative medical model usually associated with research in acute care settings.