Nursing research: A success story or what next?

Abstract

In this editorial I would like to share with you some of the challenges which, in my view, we need to reflect on and perhaps what can be done to strengthen our research and moving forward. The challenges I would like to address concern the kind of research questions we raise and in particular the implicit assumptions that lie behind those questions. A further challenge, in my opinion, is how we regard knowledge and knowledge building in relation to research, i.e. how we understand the process of producing evidence based knowledge, addressing discovery, evaluation and implementation. The third challenge is related to the first and is connected with our closeness to practice and, perhaps even more, how we can integrate research in practice, which is related to how we position ourselves as researchers.  I am fully aware that there are many barriers and hurdles to overcome but that should not stop us striving to enable the next generation of nurse researchers to go even further than their predecessors.