UT Southwestern’s Neuroscience Nursing Research Center (NNRC) shares nursing research expertise on West Coast

When the Neuroscience Nursing Research Center (NNRC) was founded in 2013 as part of the Department of Neurology and Neurotherapeutics at UT Southwestern, the goal was simple: to bring more nurses into research.

Since then, more than thirty nurses at UT Southwestern have embarked on research projects aimed at improving care for patients with neurological disorders; more than twenty nurses have been authors on publications.

The starting point for many of those publications is the NNRC boot camp, where nurses gain the necessary tools to be principal investigator or lead author on research studies.

The boot camp began at UT Southwestern and has branched out to provide services to nurses at Parkland and St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, California.

UT Southwestern's Neuroscience Nursing Research Center conducted a research bootcamp for nurses at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, CA.
UT Southwestern's Neuroscience Nursing Research Center conducted a research boot camp for nurses at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, CA.

Dr. Harry Peled, Medical Director of Cardiology and Critical Care at St. Jude, invited the NNRC to train staff as part of the hospital’s initiative to provide high-level neurocritical care.

“The nurses uniformly came away with a sense of productivity and accomplishment that they had never had before,” said Dr. Peled. “Those two days truly energized the staff in so many ways.”

DaiWai Olson, Ph.D., RN, and Sonja Stutzman, Ph.D., conducted a two-day training for nurses and therapists at St. Jude that guided them through the process of writing and implementing a nurse-driven protocol.

“Both Dr. Stutzman and Dr. Olson were so knowledgeable that they could easily answer all our questions in a manner that helped us to move forward with our protocol and get it completed in a timely fashion, “ said Claudia Skinner, RN, St. Jude’s Medical Center.

“The boot camp made the process less complex and more attainable,” said Marysol Cacciata, RN, St. Jude’s Medical Center. “We are excited to be a part of the research team.”

Dr. Olson would like to see nurses all over the world trained in research skills.

“The vast majority of hospitals in the world do not have the luxury of being at the forefront of the science of caring for neurologically injured patients,” he said.

“At UT Southwestern, we are privileged to have a front seat to new scientific discoveries, and be a part of that discovery process. So I believe it is part of our obligation to the healthcare community to share what we have learned. “

Learn more about the NNRC.