NURSING RESEARCH PRIORITY SETTING IN IRAN: A DELPHI SURVEY

  Nurses are the largest professional group of healthcare providers, who significantly influence the quality and effectiveness of health care services. This requires the development of scientific nursing knowledge and systematic attention to nursing research activities, especially clinical research, in order to provide strong evidence for nursing interventions. In this regard, research priority setting is an essential step for improving the quality of health services. This study was conducted to determine the nursing research priorities in Iran. This study was initially conducted in 2015 using a three-round Delphi method with the participation of 19 nursing experts in the fields of administration, clinical practice,, education and research,and then was revised in 2017. Initially, a draft of the issues related to nursing research was prepared based on the concerns of nursing experts and upstream documents. Afterwards, the prepared priorities were sent to the participants in three consecutive phases, and their opinions were analyzed using directed content analysis. The research priorities were revised by 43 nursing experts from various regions in Iran. Based on the content analysis of the data, in the phase of nursing priority setting, 36 priorities were obtained in the administrative (21 items), educational (2 items), clinical practice (11 items), and research domains (2 items). In the revision phase, these priorities increased to 57 cases in the administrative (23 items), educational (11 items), clinical practice (18 items), and research domains (5 items). Current priorities are focused on the national needs in nursing research. Therefore, conducting research in the identified areas in this study could improve the quality of nursing care and health outcomes, which in turn promotes the health of individuals, families and the community.