Faculty

This article describes nurses' testimony before congressional committees between1993 and 2011. We address three questions: (a) How have trends in nurses' testimony changed over time? (b) What do data reveal about nursing's engagement with health policy issues on the congressional agenda? (c) How might the findings be useful in implementation of health care reform and the Institute of Medicine report on the Future of Nursing. Using LexisNexis® Congressional online database, we identified 434 nursing testimonies presented at congressional hearings. Descriptive statistics were used to examine characteristics of the nurse expert witnesses and the testimonies topics on which they testified. Nurses most frequently testified on workforce issues (36%), followed by access and coverage (14%). The majority of the nurse witnesses had graduate degrees 65% and lived and worked in fewer than 10 states. Nurses appeared before House or Senate appropriations committees 38% more often than before any other congressional committees. Our findings point to the need for additional research, especially given the crescendo of calls for nursing to step up to the political table. The article concludes with implications for future research and policy action.

This article provides the key findings of interviews and focus groups with researchers and administrators throughout a P30 Center on the issues of collaboration among researchers, multidisciplinary research, center support, and dissemination. The most notable findings confirmed throughout this process include methods of collaboration and shared strategies for subject recruitment. Specifically, the researchers participating in the P30 Center recommended that a research-intensive environment facilitate the ability of investigators to discuss their methods, struggles, and findings in ways that unite investigators toward a common goal to advance the science and improve health care. Researchers become isolated easily, thus running the risk of losing valuable time by duplicating others' work, falling short in fulfilling their commitments to scientific research, and losing opportunities to learn from each others' experiences. Especially in the realm of subject recruitment and study design, researchers often have similar problems and can benefit from both informal conversations and structured forums. Based on these findings, the authors provide recommendations for future collaborative research in schools of nursing. These include establishing certain key institutional structures and mechanisms by which established researchers can interact with junior investigators to train and mentor them.

Group prenatal care (GPNC) is an innovative alternative to individual prenatal care. In this longitudinal study we used ethnographic methods to explore African American and Hispanic women's experiences of receiving GPNC in two urban clinics. Methods included individual, in-depth, semistructured interviews of women and group leaders in GPNC, participant observation of GPNC sessions, and medical record review. GPNC offered positive experiences and met many of women's expressed preferences regarding prenatal care. Six themes were identified, which represented separate aspects of women's experiences: investment, collaborative venture, a social gathering, relationships with boundaries, learning in the group, and changing self. Taken together, the themes conveyed the overall experience of GPNC. Women were especially enthusiastic about learning in groups, about their relationships with group leaders, and about having their pregnancy-related changes and fears normalized; however, there were also important boundaries on relationships between participants, and some women wished for greater privacy during physical examinations.