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VIEWPOINT • Rev. esc. enferm. USP 54 • 2020 • https://doi.org/10.1590/S1980-220X2020pv0103661 linkcopy

Open-access What is the Nursing research agenda for the COVID-19 pandemic?

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In 2020 we celebrated 200 years since the birth of Florence Nightingale, the founder of professional nursing, a pioneer in the use of statistics, and a promoter of social reforms that preceded welfare states(1).

In 2018, in celebration of her bicentennial, the World Health Organization (WHO) in collaboration with the International Council of Nursing (ICN) launched the Nursing Now campaign to boost the debate regarding nursing profiles worldwide(2). The World Health Assembly designated 2020 as the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife, calling upon the world leaders to make massive investments in order to improve and support the performance of these professionals facing the health challenges of the 21st century(3-4). Above all, in this exact year, health professionals, in particular nurses, became the centre of attention due to the advent of COVID-19, officially declared as a pandemic by WHO on March 11, 2020(5).

The essential role of health care professionals during this pandemic is a milestone in contemporary history. Among many contributions of nursing in the context of healthcare, noticeable performances regarding health education, infection prevention and disease surveillance, organization and preparation of long-term services, protection of people with chronic diseases, as well as acute care of severe cases with COVID-19 have been observed(6-9).

As the largest category of health professionals worldwide(10), nurses have done monumental work, each time being more and more evidence-based. However, among the numerous calls for research funding to support the response to COVID-19, to our knowledge, none have been identified to be specifically designed to aid in nursing research. In the rapid effervescence of several research groups that have built up, everything seems to indicate that nursing research remains subsumed in the knowledge of other disciplines(10). In multidisciplinary groups of researchers in public health, this can be seen as a gain. However, it could also be a loss with regards to nursing knowledge, and furthermore in prestige spots in the decision-making arena and, mainly, opportunities for qualification of the nursing care.

Parallel to the participation in multidisciplinary teams, nursing research groups should build partnerships with each other in order to strengthen research capabilities that meet our specificity, preferably in multinational groups in order to expand the potential for the generalization of results and fundraising.

We aim to call upon nurses to work together throughout an agenda of research priorities in nursing to be investigated. In a rapid review of research conducted by nurses, we have identified themes and sub-themes of interest, and proposed some that we considered more relevant to be developed in nursing research (Chart 1).

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Chart 1
Possible themes and sub-themes of nursing research concerning COVID-19.

We do not intend to cover all aspects of research needed for the fight against COVID-19, since this has been widely discussed in international scenarios(10-11). The objective of this article is to provoke reflection and stimulate global thinking on nursing research related to COVID-19.

This proposed agenda calls on nurses at national and international levels to combine efforts, engaging associations and societies, nursing educational institutions, and funding agencies to foster visibility of the production of nursing knowledge. The ultimate goal is to address the universal right to health care access. Thus, nursing research will strengthen Florence Nightingale’s legacy.

References

Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    07 Dec 2020
  • Date of issue
    2020
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This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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