The ever-expanding role of nurses is helping those with, or those looking for, Atlanta healthcare jobs.

While those with nursing jobs already maintain the roles of caregivers, educators, advanced practitioners and administrators, many nurses are now also adding research to that list. According to an article by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, many healthcare professionals think that having nurses identify problems, ask questions and share outcomes is beneficial to patients and the profession as a whole.

“Nursing is still evolving as a profession, and research adds to nursing theory and knowledge,” JoEllen Dattilo, Ph.D., RN, professor and associate dean of the Georgia Baptist College of Nursing of Mercer University in Atlanta, said in the article. “We all learn a lot from it.”
While nurses are often involved in clinical trials led by doctors and scientists, they are beginning to make their own qualitative and quantitative studies into education, medications, procedures and day-to-day practice. Advanced practice nurses can often create their own studies with the encouragement of hospitals, such as Atlanta’s St. Joseph’s Center for Nursing Excellence, which sponsors outcome-based research.

“There’s more emphasis placed on research in nursing today, and evidence-based practice is driving it,” Helen Hodges, Ph.D., RN, professor and coordinator of the RN and BSN programs at the Georgia Baptist College of Nursing, said in the article. “More and more, nurses are taking research out of the ivory tower and putting it at the bedside in order to facilitate the best patient outcomes.

“Instead of a trial-and-error approach or a ‘We’ve always done it this way,’ attitude, now we’re asking, ‘Do we have evidence?’” Hodges continued. “If it’s not there, we’re doing the research.”

Some areas nurses in Atlanta are currently researching include: reducing bloodstream infections, safe administration of medication, strength training for heart patients, improving nursing student retention and making chest tube removal less painful.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 4:14 pm and is filed under jobs, Healthcare. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.