The Importance of Nursing Research
By: Amanda Moore
The view of the Irish Sea
As my time in Dublin comes to a close, I am beginning to reflect back on my internship experience with Trinity College Dublin’s School of Nursing. I had the opportunity to spend 8 weeks supporting a project focused on implementing palliative care into the intensive care unit (ICU). Before I started on this project, my knowledge of palliative care was limited. I thought that palliative care was simply end-of-life care for the patient and their family. As I learned more about the project, I quickly realized that palliative care can mean so much more, including offering guidance with family-clinician conflicts, spiritual distress, symptom burden, and managing complicated grief.
Palliative care is mostly offered in units such as hospice and oncology, so confronting these norms and integrating this care into the ICU has not been an easy task. Nurses and doctors have been reluctant to stray from their traditional form of ICU care and they have therefore been reluctant to invite palliative care specialists to access their work environment. Yet numerous studies have shown that terminally ill patients who are discharged from the ICU could benefit from palliative care due to their life-limiting illnesses, poor quality-of-life and high mortality rate.
Throughout my internship experience, I spent my work days in a nearby hospital in Dublin, St. Vincent’s University Hospital. I worked alongside nurses and doctors in the hospital’s pain and palliative care center. My daily activities mainly involved transcribing data from patient records and conducting data analysis to test our hypothesis. I tracked all of the ICU patients from 2022-2024 and documented, categorized, and evaluated the level of palliative care each patient did or did not receive. I enjoyed the environment that I worked in because I was often included in team discussions of specific patients or even invited to join in on their lunch break conversations. I was also given the unique opportunity to be directly involved in patient care in the ICU. I assisted the nurses by taking patient vitals and recording patient medical history. This hands-on involvement helped add an important human element to the patients for whom I was tracking their electronic health records. For those who did receive palliative care, I observed a noticeable reduction in the stress level of the patients and their families after they received palliative care. Establishing a palliative care plan also gave them concrete next steps which addressed their uncertainties and helped to ease their anxieties.
This internship has shown me just how important research is to the field of nursing. It helps nurses provide better care for their patients based on evidence and real outcomes. The process of conducting research and translating findings into nursing practices demonstrates a commitment to continuous improvement that can lead to meaningful advances in global healthcare.
The Global Research and Internship Program (GRIP) provides outstanding undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to intern or conduct research abroad for 8 to 12 weeks over the summer. Participants gain career-enhancing experience and global exposure that is essential in a global workforce.