Leadership through policy research.

There are many ways of providing leadership, but one of the most important is through the guidance and direction provided for initiating new, improved healthcare policies. Nurses at the executive level--whether in primary, secondary, or tertiary agencies--are in an ideal position to have an impact on decisions about who should receive healthcare services, the nature of the services, and the design of the organizational structures to deliver them. A great deal has been written about nurses' participation in policy making, but there has been little attention to an extremely important mechanism for improving national and community healthcare: policy research. In this article, the authors provide an overview of the purposes and methods of policy research and discuss its inclusion in service and academic programs.