Abstract
There is a lack of clarity in the literature about what nursing research is or ought to be. There are ample guidelines and texts on how to do nursing research and on syllabus development and countless arguments on why nursing research is synonymous with qualitative approach. This suggests concerns within the profession that nursing research has been developing in a direction of its own that could have had very little influence on health care policy development. Some claim the opposite that nursing practice, in particular in North America, has been evidence-based for the past three decades. In this context, evidence-based is often interpreted as taking part in randomised clinical trials. In this paper, we use historical observations to identify areas of interest which include all issues related to education and training, expertise and working environment for future research.
©2011 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston