Nurses have a key role in the research agenda of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, especially in the areas of primary care, outcomes research, translation of research into practice, and quality of care. AHRQ recently issued solicitations for grant proposals for projects, including nursing research, to examine the impact of health care working conditions on patient safety and quality of care. The Agency's Center for Primary Care Research (CPCR) is studying patient safety and how to reduce high-risk medical errors in the outpatient setting, as well as how information technology can improve care and patient safety.
AHRQ recently awarded grants to 19 primary care practice-based research networks, in which nurses play a key role, according to CPCR Director Helen Burstin, M.D., M.P.H., and her coauthors David I. Lewin, M.Phil., and Heddy Hubbard, R.N., M.P.H. These networks will work together to conduct research with over 5,000 primary care practices and almost 7 million patients across the United States to examine primary care practice, as well as patient safety, working conditions, mental health, and health care disparities. One of the networks based at Yale will focus on nurse practitioner practices.
Also, AHRQ and the American Academy of Nursing have joined forces to select a yearly candidate to serve a 12-month term as a Senior Nurse Scholar at the Agency. In addition to their own research interests, these scholars help AHRQ develop areas of investigation that integrate clinical nursing care questions with critical issues of quality, effectiveness, cost, and access to health care.
To help improve communication between AHRQ and the nursing community, AHRQ is developing a nursing page for the Agency's Web site, and a nursing LISTSERV® has been established to notify subscribers electronically about funding opportunities, conferences, and other activities. The Agency is actively encouraging more grant applications from nurses as principal investigators, and growing numbers of AHRQ's priority areas are especially relevant to nurses: disease prevention, health promotion, primary care, quality of care delivery, and service delivery. Input from nursing is essential to improving health care quality, and nurses are encouraged to apply for research funding, concludes Dr. Burstin.
See "Future directions in primary care research: Special issues for nurses," by Dr. Burstin, Mr. Lewin, and Ms. Hubbard, in the May 2001 Policy, Politics, and Nursing Practice 103, pp. 103-107.
Reprints (AHRQ Publication No. 01-R071) are available from the AHRQ Publications Clearinghouse and AHRQ InstantFAX.