Chapter 24: Nursing research.

The article presents information on nursing research. In spite of the fact that Flarence Nightingale, a nurse, herself had based her reforms on investigation and was a member of the Statistical Society, to which she presented a paper on uniform hospital statistics, her initiative was not followed up, and the lack of such statistics and particularly those relating to nursing manpower is a common complaint from all investigators, from the Lancet Commission to the evidence to the Royal Commission on the National Health Service in 1977. It was the Minority Report rather than the Majority that was in the end to have the most effect on nursing, because after 1948 a number of people both inside and outside the profession applied research techniques to problems connected with nursing. In the past a number of facts have militated against the nursing profession becoming research-minded. The main concern of the early reformed nursing had been to carve itself an empire and to propagate the Nightingale system -- not to question it.