ESPE Abstracts

Background: Nurses are expert in providing patient care and have numerous and varied clinical responsibilities. Nurse may feel unprepared for the pursuit of scholarly role-writing for publication/engaging in research/giving professional presentations may seem overwhelming. It is essential that nurses have the skills and are empowered to become scholars.

Objective and hypotheses: The purpose of this systematic review was to explore the following questions: 1) What are the barriers nurses that impede nurses from pursuing a scholarly role? 2)What systems are needed to support nurses in a scholarly role? 3) How can nurses be empowered to be scholars?

Method: A literature review was conducted to address the guiding questions. Inclusive criteria included articles that were (a) published between 2010–2015, (b) published in English, (c) relevant to the study questions. Search terms included, but were not limited to (“Nurses, Scholarship” [Mesh] OR “Nursing Scholarship” [Mesh] OR “Advanced Nursing Practice, Scholarship” [Mesh] AND “Nursing Empowerment”.

Results: An in-depth search in the PubMed data base yielded 879 articles. Articles not published in English or published more than 5 years ago were discarded. This narrowed the search to 335 articles. Those articles were reviewed. Ultimately 80 articles were read and analysed using a thematic approach.

Conclusion: A variety of themes were identified related to empowering nurses as scholars that included the need for 1) mentorship, 2) funding, 3) protected time, 4) infrastructure, 5) guidance, 6) incentives and 6) inspiration.