Developing research capacity: Identifying and quantifying nursing research activity in the NHS

Many hospitals are beginning to implement strategies that should strengthen and support nursing research capacity. One large NHS trust hospital in England wished to identify the level and scope of its nursing research activity to provide a baseline against which to measure future progress and to provide information that would contribute to its capacity-building strategy. The primary aim of the study was to identify the number of research-active nurses within the trust. A 'walkabout', database search and interviews with senior nurses suggested that 34 out of 1,574 nurses (2.1%) were considered to be research active, with 14 of these nurses having at least one publication. When compared with other studies measuring nursing research activity, 2.1% was found to be significantly lower than the findings in all these other studies. However, analysis suggests that the differences in reported levels of research activity might be due to differing sampling methods and various definitions of what constitutes research activity. Comparing extrapolated data (number of publications) from each study suggests that research activity is comparable throughout the UK and in Australia.