Nurses' Research Utilization Barriers, Facilitators and Determination of Affecting Factors

ABS TRACT Objective: Research utilization is a major component in nursing practices however it is known that research results are not employed sufficiently. Nurses need to utilize the research results for safe and excellent care. The purpose of this research is to determine barriers, facilitators and factors affecting research utilization by clinic nurses. Material and Methods: It is a descriptive and crosssectional research. The sample of the research was constituted by 523 nurses (accessibility: 52.3%) providing patient care at the clinics of a total of nine hospitals consisting of one university hospital, two public hospitals and six private hospitals. The data were collected by means of Research Utilization Barriers Scale and the structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and Kruskall Wallis test and Mann Whitney-U test were used to analyze the data. Results: The clinic nurses emphasized as the most important barrier that “the nurse does not have time to read research” (78.2%). They also stated that the most important facilitators in respect to research utilization were “easy access to internet and research results” and “institutive and administrative support for research activities”. This study revealed that nurses perceived the settings and the lack of time as the greatest barriers in using research findings. Conclusion: The primary research utilization barrier is related to setting. With the intent of increasing the research utilization, it can be suggested to make necessary arrangements in terms of providing easy access to research results for nurses and increasing corporate and management support.