Research and innovation

High quality nursing research and support to innovate and use evidence in practice, enables nurses and those who work with them to develop new knowledge and nursing practice, and to ultimately transform patient care.

We are determined to maximize the opportunity for research and innovation to positively impact on the care experienced by patients and their families, and ensure our members gain fully from the support we offer to their decision making as professionals. We are significantly increasing our members' access to the right standards, knowledge and information to support high quality care and drive improvements in practice.

We promote the use of knowledge to inform policy and to inform decisions and nursing actions. We provide tools and help people develop the skills and confidence to ask questions, make evidence-informed decisions, innovate and adapt in response to changing needs.

We contribute to and maintain a knowledge base for nursing, ensuring that our input to national and international multi-professional health research agendas is explicit. This contribution includes identifying and helping to fill gaps in standards, guidance and knowledge resources of relevance to nursing, and continuing to build the authoritative collection on nursing in the UK.

Our outputs are evidence-informed, impartial and clear about the source, quality and strength of evidence presented. Our cataloguing of the RCN collection assures its intellectual integrity.

We connect members to the knowledge they need so they can use it to improve quality of care. Format and content is relevant for people with different levels of expertise, roles, settings and influence. The content and expertise of the RCN library and archive and the staff supporting its use, inspire the nursing community and the public to gain an insight into the past, present and future of nursing.