When I think about nurses engaging in generation of research evidence my first thought would be nurses helping with a drug trial administering meds or even just charting assessment data during their normal shift that is then looked at afterwards, maybe even weeks or months afterwards as part of a research project done by others. I think that’s because I don’t really think of research as a as a primary role nurses have, even though I know Dr. Kramlich has published many research articles in the past.
In terms of the ethics involved, there’s probably a lot of overlap with HIPPA in regards to keeping identifying markers out of any shared data. As patient advocates, nurses have an ethical duty to be the voice of the patient when their right to privacy is being violated. Patient’s might not be aware of their rights or be present to speak up for themselves, it is the nurse’s responsibility to intervene. The Nursing Code of Ethics has a good outline that nurses should be aware of, even if they are acting as researchers and are not working on the floor treating patients.
For implementing new evidence into a practice setting, nurses have a responsibility to use the most recent available methods that have been shown to have positive effects on patient outcomes. Nurses should critically evaluate any research they come across to make sure that the results are true and not manipulated. If I had to guess, I would have to assume that hospitals don’t want nurses just implementing new practices without some oversight, and there is probably some procedure to get it thoroughly investigated by a multi-disciplinary team before it is allowed to be put into practice.
