To be quite honest, research and I had a love hate relationship. When I first started this course I found it frustrating and thus uninteresting; however, over the course I realized this frustration was stemming from not understanding the content and as soon as I covered the chapters as a whole and plugged all the pieces together it was amazing how my attitude shifted and light bulbs went off. This is definitely a building block to successfully understanding nursing process; but like I said, it must be approached as looking how all the components ( qualitative research, quantitative research, ethics , critiques, etcetera ) work together and build off each other to create sound research.

The neat thing about research is that it is applicable to nurses even if they are not personally involved in the discovery/ testing process. By this I mean that I can participate in a research study by reviewing and critiquing the information. For this reason research can be appealing to many different people, as one can utilize their personal strengths.

Overall, although difficult at times, this course has opened my eyes to approaching and processing information and piecing it together to form a research project. This is valuable information that I can see myself using throughout my nursing career, especially when I pursue my NP and develop a thesis project.