Dr. Eustace is a member of the Nursology.net management team!

Nursology.net exists to provide a way for you, the reader, to get your research out to a broad, global audience!  We are increasingly challenged to find new ways of improving population health outcomes by ensuring quality nursing care for all (Fawcett, Amweg, Legor, Kim, & Maghrabi, 2018). As the largest segment of the health care workforce, the nursing profession is positioned to lead and advance health as well as transform health care systems (IOM, 2011).

With this charge in hand, contemporary nursing scholars need to be in the forefront of advancing the profession and promoting a better understanding of the contributions of nursing knowledge in health care through scholarly development of nursing science. Although there has always been hiccups or outright aversion of nursing theory development within the profession, this is about to change as more nurses are called to lead the way to deal with the 21^st century health challenges that need an informed nursing workforce (All‐Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health, 2016).

As a profession, I believe, we are transforming and our approaches are evolving.  Although our contributions might seem to be undervalued and in many cases our capacity to work to our full potential may be hindered, we are the only ones who can reverse this trajectory and advocate for the discipline, our patients, families and communities. We are the most trusted profession in health care systems. We have vast experience in theory construction methodologies and have significantly contributed to concepts related to nursing and health care.

Unfortunately, most of our preliminary work is not known to many nurses within the discipline and between disciplines. The impact of nursing on quality, access and cost of treatment is not new (All‐Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health, 2016). We need to take such positive outcomes and strive to make sure our contributions to public health policy and decision making are shared widely through various venues including peer-reviewed publications, professional organizations and innovative websites. These venues are critical for information exchange as well as advancing nursing knowledge.

Nursology.net is an innovative website that provides a venue to promote global exchange of nursing knowledge in the 21^st century. Through Nursology.net, nurses are encouraged to contribute by sharing their work on how they have constructed a nursing theory, how they have tested nursing theoretical underpinnings in the empirical world and the impact of their outcomes on nursing practice, education and/or health policy. This process of knowledge sharing provides a timely channel for “meta-theory”- the study of ourselves to – re-examine the strengths and weakness of our theorizing processes. This is highly needed in the discipline to clarify the domain of nursing, guide nursing research and practice (Jairath, Peden-McAlpine, Sullivan, Vessey & Henly, 2018; Lor, Backonja, & Lauver, 2017).

Although we are very limited in systematic reviews related to summarizing theoretical evidence or theoretical meta-analyses (e.g. Wolf., & France, 2017), and we are not well structured in disseminating our knowledge outside nursing circles, we can close the gaps by becoming CHAMPIONS for better ways of sharing and learning from good nursing practice and from our own research locally, nationally and at the global-level (All‐Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health, 2016).  So, where can you start? The answer is Nursology.net.  

And why should you care about disseminating your findings on Nursology.net?

You should care because the construction of nursing knowledge can only continue to evolve as long as we share how we utilize and/or refine what we know about the theoretical underpinnings related to the art and science of nursing and how we contribute to the profession, the healthcare environment, targeted population and ultimately population health outcomes over time. Nurse scholars or student nurses should strive to share their findings on how they make deductive and inductive conclusive augments on their phenomena of interest by sharing their work as Practice, Education/theory, Research/Theory, Policy/Theory or Quality Improvement/Theory exemplars. (Note: there are forms on each of the main “Exemplar” sections that you can use to share your work!)

Are you interested in contributing your research work to Nursology.net? If YES, please follow the attached quick guide to get started! Become a CHAMPION FOR ADVANCING NURSING KNOWLEDGE!!  (Download a PDF of the flow chart here)

References

All‐Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health. (2016). Triple Impact: How Developing Nursing Will Improve Health, Promote Gender Equality and Support Economic Growth. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/hrh/com-heeg/digital-APPG_triple-impact.pdf

Fawcett, J., Amweg, L. N., Legor, K., Kim, B. R., & Maghrabi, S. (2018). More Thoughts About Conceptual Models and Literature Reviews: Focus on Population Health. Nursing science quarterly, 31(4), 384-389.

Institute of Medicine (US) (2011). Committee on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative on the Future of Nursing. (2011). The future of nursing: Leading change, advancing health. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.

Jairath, N. N., Peden-McAlpine, C. J., Sullivan, M. C., Vessey, J. A., & Henly, S. J. (2018). Theory and Theorizing in Nursing Science: Commentary from the Nursing Research Special Issue Editorial Team. Nursing research, 67(2), 188-195.

Lor, M., Backonja, U., & Lauver, D. R. (2017). How Could Nurse Researchers Apply Theory to Generate Knowledge More Efficiently?. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 49(5), 580-589.

Wolf, Z. R., & France, N. E. (2017). Caring in Nursing Theory. International Journal for Human Caring, 21(2), 95-108.