Increasing Nursing Faculty Research: The Iowa Gerontological Nursing Research and Regional Research Consortium Strategies

Nursing has made great strides in its development as a scholarly discipline. The number of nurses with doctoral degrees (not necessarily PhDs) continues to increase (Dr. Polly Bednash, personal communication, October 16, 2007; Health Resources and Services Administration, 2007). However, only 0.9% of the estimated 2,909,467 nurses in the United States have doctoral research degrees, and this shortage is even more severe in other countries (Broome, 2009). Nonetheless, the number of nursing studies that are conducted and reported in peer-reviewed journals is at an all-time high. These efforts have produced a number of research foci for the discipline as a whole that are contributing substantially to research-based practice and to healthcare policy decisions (e.g., premature infants, persons with dementia, family care-givers, HIV/AIDS). Yet, there are still too few nurse academicians with active programs of nursing research (Hinshaw, 2003). Moreover, the graying of many seasoned nurse researchers threatens to create an even more critical shortage of nurse scientists in the near future. The imminent loss of research-intensive nurse faculty due to retirement threatens to further increase the overall shortage of senior nurse scientists and educators (Buerhaus, Staiger, & Auerbach, 2000). Compounding these problems, too few university schools of nursing currently have the research infrastructure and the critical mass of nurse researchers in a number of areas of inquiry for the collaboration and mentoring that are optimal to support the research efforts of individual faculty members (Dr. Polly Bednash, personal communication, October 14, 2007). Although a substantial number of schools of nursing desire to increase the number of faculty programs of research, many in the United States and other countries have underdeveloped research environments and cultures. Nursing academic units are often resource poor, lacking the means to recruit or develop the most advantageous number of faculty with active programs of research in a focused area. The results are too many nurse researchers who are working in relative isolation; junior, and often senior, faculty who have underdeveloped research skills and programs of research; and numerous, discrete, nursing studies, rather than several studies around common or related topics. Even among schools of nursing located in research-intensive universities, cadres of nurse faculty with active programs of research in a specific focal area are often lacking. These circumstances make collaborative research and development of networks among faculties of several schools of nursing a useful strategy for the effective use of scarce resources that are required to build a stimulating and supportive research environment. Additional resources are often needed to mentor and develop junior faculty, strengthen the research skills of all existing faculty, and increase research productivity, in particular to promote clusters of studies in focused areas, studies with more diverse samples, and multisite and cross-cultural studies.