Kathryn Connell, Eleanor Turi, and Mollie Hobensack , 2025-04-28 08:30:00
Every day, nurses make decisions that shape not only how patients recover but how they experience illness.
Take patients recovering from sepsis, who are often under sedation on a ventilator. Evidence urges daily sedation breaks to prevent delirium, but guidelines rarely acknowledge the fear of suddenly waking up in a maze of tubes. These moments — where protocol clashes with human need — make nurses want to be scientists and figure out better answers. While the three of us have had that chance, most don’t. That needs to change.
When Americans picture a nurse, they think of the steady hand checking a pulse, not a scientist analyzing data. But nurses are scientists. They can earn Ph.Ds., lead clinical trials, and study problems that textbooks overlook: how a family’s silence signals despair, how to deliver mental health care in places where patients feel at ease, the ripple effects of a nurse being spat on midshift. Nurses can both study workplace violence and live it.
This duality — caregiver and investigator — lets us find the answers to questions that matter to patients: Why does pain medication confuse my mother? How do I heal when trauma follows me home from the ICU?
Yet most nurses are forced to choose between caring for patients and conducting research. While physician-scientists are supported in splitting their time between research and clinical work, nurse-scientists are not. Those who wish to continue practicing often do so on nights and weekends, sometimes in unpaid and unsustainable structures. This system stifles innovation and leaves gaps in care unaddressed.
Despite nurses making up the largest health care workforce — 4.9 million strong — schools of nursing receive only about 1% of the entire NIH extramural research budget, and the future of the National Institute of Nursing Research is in question. This stark disparity reflects a lack of investment in the vital contributions nurses make to science.
The consequences of sidelining nurse-scientists are not abstract. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed a deep disconnect between scientific research and the people it aims to serve. Proposed NIH funding cuts have sent shockwaves through academia, yet many Americans care more about the rising cost of eggs. Science often feels remote, irrelevant, and, in some cases, untrustworthy.
Nurse-scientists could help bridge this gap. We speak the languages of research and bedside care. We don’t just publish findings in journals; we translate them into action. We have the trust of our patients and communities with 75% of Americans considering nurses highly honest and ethical — rapport that many researchers struggle to build.
Imagine the breakthroughs nurse-scientists could unlock with real investment. Not just “better protocols,” but research shaped by nights spent holding a delirious patient’s hand. Consider Sister Jean Ward, the nurse who in the 1950s noticed that jaundiced infants placed by sunlit windows had lower bilirubin levels. Her observation led to phototherapy — now the standard treatment for neonatal jaundice worldwide, saving countless newborns from brain damage and death. This breakthrough came not from a laboratory but from a nurse connecting patterns at the bedside.
Science is under attack. Misinformation spreads rapidly, skepticism is high, and the gap between the research and the real world has never been wider. Nurses are uniquely positioned to help. The solution is not to pit nurses against other professions, but to recognize that science thrives when shaped by diverse voices.
Hospitals and universities should create hybrid roles for nurse-scientists, mirroring physician-scientist models, with dedicated research time and funding. Federal agencies must expand support for nursing research on practical care challenges such as optimizing sedation protocols or reducing hospital-acquired infections, which directly impact patient outcomes.
Nurse-scientists don’t just want a seat at the table — we want to strengthen the science on which the table is built. By investing in hybrid roles, the health care system can ensure that research not only answers questions but asks the right ones to begin with.
Kathryn Connell, Ph.D., R.N., is an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, affiliated faculty of the Palliative and Advanced Illness Research Center, core faculty of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, clinical nurse 2 at Pennsylvania Hospital, and a senior fellow in the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. Eleanor Turi, Ph.D., R.N., is a postdoctoral fellow at Penn in the National Clinician Scholars Program, the Center for Mental Health, and the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research; she is also an associate fellow in the Leonard Davis Institute. Mollie Hobensack, Ph.D., R.N., is a clinical program manager of quality and informatics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
