What Will I Bring: Nurse Scientists' Contributions to Interdisciplinary Collaboration.

“What will I bring?” The question arose during a seminar involvingPhDstudents and theeditor (R. P.),whowas the course faculty.Our guest, a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded nurse scientist doing exciting biobehavioral work on prematurity prevention in women of diverse racial backgrounds had just “reminded” students that they would not need to “know everything” to conduct research. Rather, she emphasized in her remarks that students should build their research teamswith expertswhere needed, including scientists with a background in immunology, genetics, statistics, and other fields as appropriate. Good advice, often repeated. And then, a student raised her hand, and when called on, she said, “We are often told to build an interdisciplinary team. But with all those experts, what will I bring to that team?” Therewas amoment of stunned quiet. Our guest fell silent. The student and her classmates, who nodded in agreement, looked expectantly in the direction of the course faculty. Fortunately, there was an answer to the question provided eloquently by the guest faculty. Before our guest had mentioned the interdisciplinary contributions of her team members and their collaborative work, she had told the story of how she had started as a staff nurse in obstetric nursing. She had talked about her clinical experiences and about the people (aka as patients) she had met when she started her career and how their stories, their concerns, their hopes, and their needs inspired her to help them. She discovered she needed to learn more in order to help. She returned to school to learn more about how to provide clinical care and was encouraged to pursue a PhD in order to be able to systematically solve the clinical problems she was observing. She had explained that, even with this advanced educational preparation, she always knew she would need greater expertise about biological and behavioral aspects of her research questions than she possessed or even wished to obtain. Thus, she started building a team, which continues to work together after many years. And there was the answer. What our guest, the student asking the question, her classmates in the seminar, and each of us who are nurse scientists bring to that exquisite research team is our nursing perspective. It is our perspectives on the human condition, health and illness, prevention and healing, and understanding and care that help us see the person holistically (McBride, 2010). That holistic perspective is concerned with the hopes and needs of those for whomweprovide care. What we bring to the team is that perspective on personwho,