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From RN to research pioneer
Claire Rickard
Science academy’ s first nurse fellow shows the profession makes huge contributions to developing and refining medical processes.
Claire Rickard interviewed by Salla Harjula
Griffith University professor of nursing Claire Rickard is the first nurse ever to be made a fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences.
Rickard is director of the Alliance for Vascular Access Teaching and Research( AVATAR), a research group that has done groundbreaking work on intravascular access. Its findings have made a difference in the everyday operations of hospitals around the world.
As a former full-time RN, Rickard called a nurse’ s point of view essential to any medical research – as evidenced by this famous project and many others.
“ We have just as much to offer,” Rickard says.“ We know where improvements can often be made. We often know where savings can be made and processes improved in hospitals. [ The research ] is difficult, but it’ s worth doing. In that way, nurses can show they not only see the problems, but can also see the solutions.”
“ I like to think that [ the academy’ s decision to make me a fellow ] will help all nurses who work in research see that the academy and government do value the role of nurses in contributing to research.”
Here, Rickard details her reaction to the honour, as well as what it means for the profession.
CR: Claire, what does the appointment into the academy mean for you?
CR: Well it’ s a real honour. It’ s quite a quality check, I suppose, of our research over the last 20 years. There are probably about 3000 to 5000 nurses working in research in Australia, and they are involved in just about every clinical study that goes on. It’ s developing tomorrow’ s best practice today. I’ ve certainly worked all of those research roles in nursing, like clinical trial co-ordinator and research assistant. In some of them you get less publicity and some of them you get more publicity, like this one. But they’ re all equally valuable and important for improving patient care.
This election is obviously exciting. I got to have a lovely dinner and meet lots of esteemed, important health and science professors, as well as government leaders.
I hope all nurses who work in research see this as a big day for nursing and for showing ourselves that we can do it, you know? We have just as much to offer as other types of health researchers.
It’ s only by doing the high-quality research, which does take time, that this can happen. It’ s difficult, but it’ s worth doing and it’ s in that way that nurses can show they can see not only the problems, but also the solutions.
The Alliance for Vascular Access Teaching Research, which you lead, has done some groundbreaking work with peripheral intravenous catheters and how they are used in hospitals around the world. Would you tell us why your findings have been so influential? We do many research studies, and we hope that all of them are influential, either on their own or as we build them up to become a body of knowledge. Certainly the sort of research we like to do is high-quality, careful scientific research for mainly large, multiple hospital, randomised controlled trials. We make sure we collect enough data from enough patients to be confident in our results, so we’ re either showing a nursing procedure to be effective, or indeed not effective and one we could save time and money by avoiding.
The research we’ re probably most known for internationally was
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