ABSTRACT

Nurses are the leading healthcare professionals that play a vital role in providing health care facilities based on research findings for positive patient outcomes. The application of research findings is compulsory in nursing practice but considerable amount of barriers could hinder nurses to implement research outcomes in practice. Therefore, to boost research utilization and change current nursing practices the current study observed the obstacles to utilization of research findings in clinical practices within the nursing culture of Pakistan. A descriptive cross sectional study including 76 nurses from Pakistan through convenient sampling technique was conducted. Out of 76 nurses, 69 (87%) were females and 7 (9%) were male nurses working in medicine, surgery, medical specialty, and critical care departments. Majority of the participants belong to age 31-35 years (50%) and 25-30 years (30%) while remaining 20% from age group 36-50 years. The top four barriers were “Inadequate time to implement new ideas”, “non-cooperation of colleagues”, “The unwillingness of nurses to accept change”, “and “Research articles are not published fast”.

Conclusion: The results of the present study highlight the main barriers to research utilization among Pakistani nurses. Most of the barriers experienced by Pakistani nurses are related to those explored by other countries’ nurses.