Teaching research to graduate nursing students: a strategy using clinically based research projects.

This article describes an approach to teaching advanced practice nursing students the research process through the application of the research process to clinical problems. In the course, students propose solutions to clinically based research projects through conceptualizing the problem, identifying an appropriate theoretical framework, conceptualizing the intervention or clinical guidelines, and designing a project that includes the research design, sampling strategies, procedures for implementation of the project, and plans for data collection and analysis. These strategies challenge the advanced practice nursing student to apply research concepts to problems encountered in clinical practice and reinforces the skills needed to critique the literature, to summarize the published findings on a problem, to conceptualize a research study, and to disseminate their findings in oral presentations.