The Role of the Nurse Scientist, Essay Example

The incidence of graduate level nurses continues to decrease as a consequence of the growing demands of the field in addition to a decrease in qualified nurse scientists. According to the authors, of “Preparing the Nurse Scientist for Academia and Industry”, “Doctoral programs are in a unique position to help their students not only to learn about becoming scientists, but also to help them explore the roles open to them upon graduation” (Lewallen & Kohlenberg, 2011). It is therefore valuable to implement outreach to encourage a greater number of nursing professionals to enroll in doctoral programs. Doing so will allow the development of nurses to increase, while their contribution to the field of nursing in terms of scientific exploration will enact quality improvement advantages.

Many nurses enter the field because they want to work in a position that will allow them to contribute to patient care (Taylor et al., 2011). However, many serve roles that result in assisting patients rather than directly contributing to improved care through the study of relevant interventions and operations. The nurse scientist serves a special role because this individual has the unique ability to bridge the gap between nursing practice and scientific knowledge. The nurse scientist has the ability to refine clinical practice in a manner that will reform the techniques and strategies that have been historically implemented in the field in order to help the profession evolve in a manner that will allow it to produce more favorable results. It is therefore valuable to work to recruit more individuals to the nursing field so that a greater degree of knowledge could be added to nursing science to revolutionize the health care industry (Nardi et al., 2013).

References

Lewallen LP, Kohlenberg E. (2011). Preparing the nurse scientist for academia and industry. Nurse Educ Perspect., 32(1) :22-5.

Nardi DA, Gyurko CC. (2013). The Global Nursing Faculty Shortage: Status and Solutions for Change. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 45(3): 317-26.

Taylor CR, Lillis C, LeMone P, Lynn P. (2011). Fundamentals of nursing: The art and  science of nursing care. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.