Nursing leaders explain how to empower clinical research nurses

Nursing leaders at academic medical centers should develop the infrastructure to integrate fully their clinical research nurses, states an article in the October issue of the Journal of Nursing Administration. Leaders at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia, Mass General Hospital in Boston and Anderson Cancer Center in Houston discuss the different ways they adapted a structural empowerment model to standardize education, build a practice community and integrate clinical research nurses into the broader research and clinical ecosystem. Fostering relationships between clinical research nurses and members of the research and clinical care teams support professional growth and development and can help ensure safe and compliant research care. Clinical research nurses at these systems “have a voice at the table where they were previously invisible,” the authors state.