title: The unexpected challenges of clinical research, or what they do not tell you in school.
abstract: Nurse clinicians are being asked more and more frequently to be involved in nursing research. After all, who better to conduct clinical research than those people who spend much of their working day dealing with direct patient care issues. Although more nurses are beginning to understand the value of research in their clinical practice and more articles discussing clinically based research are becoming available, little information is available concerning the process of doing research in a clinical setting. Educational institutions teach research methodology but do little to prepare nurses for the reality of conducting research as part of the daily work load. The following is a discussion of a number of realities encountered by a nursing research team conducting a qualitative study dealing with an outpatient population. Included are a number of suggestions that the research team believes will help other clinical researchers better prepare for conducting research in their clinical setting.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dykeman
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Despotes
mesh_terms: D003625:Data Collection / Q000379:methods; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D009042:Motivation; D009720:Nurse Clinicians; D015399:Nursing Research / Q000193:education*