The Symbiotic Collaboration Between Family Nursing and Data Science.

KEY POINTS A joint symposium, from conceptualization to outcomes, highlights the benefits of collaboration across those with expertise in health systems and informatics and those with expertise in family nursing. We share our own experience and lessons learned and provide a call to action in family nursing team science. Themain steps toward building mutual trust in a team science approach are identifying key members, balancing disagreement, and setting clear expectations from each other. I n this day and age, team science is at the forefront of health sciences. The complex and multifaceted nature of current and newly discovered health problems calls for formation of multidisciplinary teams to have better understanding of healthcare issues and to develop appropriate care management strategies. This presents some growing pains for nursing science that has its roots developing solo scientists. Gradually, leaders in the profession are beginning to recognize the vital contribution of nursing to team science to address important and complex problems in health and healthcare delivery. Much of the emphasis, including some of our own work, focuses on large multidisciplinary research teams. Often overlooked in this conversation is the distinct expertise within the disciplines and the important discoveries and problems that can be solved by distinct specialties on unidisciplinary research teams, that is, research teams composed of individuals with the same discipline background. To that end, two Research Interest Groups (RIGs) of the Midwest Nursing Research Society (MNRS), Family Health (FH) and Health Systems, Policy & Informatics (HSPI), began a process to explore a potentially symbiotic collaboration between the fields of family nursing and health systems and informatics. This short article aims to report on a joint symposium, from conceptualization to outcomes, highlighting the benefits of collaboration across those with expertise in health systems and informatics and those with expertise in family nursing. The goal is to share our own experience and lessons learned and provide resources for a call to action in nursing team science.