Website: http://www.ualberta.ca/~kusp

Research involves

Implementing nursing and general social science research into health-care provision.

Research relevance

The research is contributing to the provision of better health-care by outlining strategies for implementing new research into practice.

Making Research Make a Difference

How do working nurses and other health professionals use new or existing research to provide better patient care? This is one of the questions that has kept Canada Research Chair Dr. Carole Estabrooks occupied for the past few years.

Nursing and social science researchers are continually conducting studies on all aspects of health care. With nurses providing the majority of health care in Canada, it is important that they keep up-to-date if they want to provide the best service possible. Sometimes, for a variety of organizational factors, their ability to implement scientific findings in their day-to-day practice can be hampered.

The methods used to find information and incorporate it into their decision-making processes represent the focus of Dr. Estabrooks' Knowledge Utilization Studies Program. She and her team have fine tuned the questions that are serving as basis of their research agenda over the next five years. The questions include: Do nurses use research to inform their decision making, and if so, how? And how does the structure of the health-care system influence this process?

In answering these questions, Estabrooke looks at the full spectrum of nursing research, from interventions to outcomes. She also examines the health-delivery policy. She hopes to develop strategies to increase levels of research use, and subsequently to test how this has an impact on health-care delivery. Ultimately, her research program aims to better the health-care delivery systems not only in Canada, but also worldwide.