Editorial

‘The value of nursing research in a time of global crisis’ was the overarching theme of this year’s Royal College of Nursing (RCN) International Nursing Research Conference. It was, for the first time in its 62 year history, an entirely virtual event, and whilst delegates desperately missed seeing one another in person it was nevertheless an incredibly positive experience. And in that, it in no way shied away from the reality of the circumstances that made a virtual event a necessity and the impact that has had on nurses and nursing across the world.

I thoroughly enjoyed and commend all three keynote presentations and I described one in particular (Coad, 2021) as ‘engaging, enabling and empowering’ In fact, those three words reflected the tone of the entire 3-day event. Whilst the content was as diverse and reflective of the art and science of nursing, as is the event’s trademark, two themes dominated my engagement with the agenda – the Covid-19 pandemic and clinical academic careers in nursing.

One of the concurrent sessions I attended reported on the UK-based ICON study – the impact of Covid-19 on nurses (Couper et al., 2021; Maben et al., 2021). Whilst in other sessions the ‘chat’ facility filled up very quickly, in this one there was an almost eerie silence - you could have heard a virtual pin drop. When one conference participant eventually stepped forward he wrote ‘this is a very chilling, accurate and much needed research study’. He certainly spoke for me and for many of us in that virtual room on that day as we clicked the ‘like’ button on our screens. Not only did the survey data (Couper et al., 2021) tell of the lack of structural preparedness for the pandemic including, for example, the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), it also laid bare the personal impact of nursing in the pandemic. Two particular factors - redeployment without any or adequate training or support and personal symptomatic Covid - indicated the likelihood of nurses experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. The associated qualitative study (Maben et al., 2021) identified three themes, namely, systemic challenges, moral distress and emotional exhaustion. Numerous participants identified with their presentation and Maben et al. (2021) concluded:

‘There is an urgent need to restore nurse well-being and develop a national Covid nursing workforce recovery strategy focussing on valuing the nursing workforce and nurse retention.’

We are all only too aware either directly, through personal stories, or indirectly through media coverage of how harrowing nursing through the pandemic has been and will be for some time to come for individual nurses. However, this rigorous collation, analysis and presentation of evidence of the collective experience, during the first wave of the pandemic in the UK, was for me, a profound example of the value of nursing research to unearth the experiences of nurses in a time of a global crisis.

Maben et al.’s and Couper et al.’s studies demonstrated the power of collaboration as nurse researchers across multiple academic institutions worked together but they also made me acutely aware of the risks of vicarious trauma for the nurses undertaking such studies. We learned that the interviews were, in the main, undertaken by experienced professors of nursing, who, just like the clinical colleagues they interviewed, supported one another through informal processes, throughout the research. This emphasised the need to actively consider not only the impact that taking part in research has on participants but also the impact of conducting research on researchers and research teams, and the value of support for all involved.

That sense of camaraderie, of nurses metaphorically holding hands, was palpable throughout the conference. There was evidence of a collective determination to build nursing capacity and capability in research and to make clinical academic careers a reality. But none of this was sugar coated. The challenges of collaborating and understanding difference within nursing and across professional boundaries was openly discussed along with the need to form coalitions on a global scale to influence decision makers and bring about this change.

This edition of JRN draws these threads together through presenting papers on the nursing workforce and research capacity and capability. None focus directly on the pandemic, rather they remind us of the essential other work that nurses continue to do alongside their pandemic care and how the pandemic has served to exacerbate some of the inherent challenges within nursing. The first four papers all have the potential to inform local or global nursing workforce strategies: the impact of the workplace on nurses’ occupational health and physical activity (Abd El-Fattah Mohamed Aly, El-Shanawany and Ghanem); the factors that affect the quality of nurses’ work-life (Kheiri et al.); the experiences of healthcare professionals during Operation Ancient Babylon in Iraq (Calamassi, Pucci and Bambi) and how to improve the retention of late career nurses (Haines et al.). The final two papers in this edition focus on the capacity and capability of nurses to engage in research: a research competency scale for nurses (Duru and Örsal) and the barriers and enablers of clinical-academic careers for General Practice nurses (Jones et al.).

JRN and our publishers, Sage, have been associated with this RCN conference for many years. This year we continued with our tradition of sponsoring awards for the ‘poster of the day’. Delegates selected three posters reflecting the breadth and impact of nursing and nursing research’s contribution to understanding it better:

• 1. The effect of COVID-19 induced lockdown on patients taking warfarin (Roberts, 2021) reported on a service improvement project which examined the impact of lockdown measures on patients taking long term anticoagulant therapy. Nursing interventions were introduced to mitigate the impact.

• 2. The experiences and perceptions of users of an electronic patient record system in a paediatric hospital setting: a systematic review (Sipanoun et al., 2021) sought to better understand the experiences and perceptions of stakeholders using an electronic patient record (EPR) system in paediatric hospital settings.

• 3. STAY-SAFE: A research project to evaluate the use of the Talking Mats™ visual communications tool with the inpatient learning disability forensic population (Rhynas et al., 2021) sought to address health inequalities and enhance therapeutic conversations around risk and safety between learning disability nurses and their patients.

Congratulations to all three winners for their engaging, empowering and enabling posters and to the RCN Research Society steering committee and their colleagues for organising a fabulous conference in such challenging times.