In a new letter published in The Lancet, Penn Nursing 's Kathryn Connell, PhD, RN, CCRN , argues that nursing is a profession where "dual expertise" is widespread yet structurally invisible. Dr. Connell calls for urgent systemic reforms to support nurse clinician–scientists who balance active bedside practice, research, and personal lived experience.
Connell, who is an Assistant Professor in Penn Nursing's Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences ; Core Faculty at the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research; Affiliated Faculty at the Palliative and Advanced Illness Research Center; Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics; and Clinical Nurse 2 at Pennsylvania Hospital ,highlights that while many nurses are driven to the profession by personal encounters with illness or health-system failures, they are traditionally viewed strictly as caregivers rather than knowledge producers. Furthermore, unlike physician–scientists who benefit from established infrastructure, formal hybrid roles for nurses remain rare. To maintain both worlds, nurse clinician–scientists often resort to working clinical shifts on nights and weekends alongside full-time academic appointments.
Translating Bedside Realities into Research
Losing this dual presence, Connell argues, stifles health care innovation. Nurse clinician–scientists are uniquely positioned to translate data into real-world care. She notes that her own research on ICU "co-patient illness severity"—how one critical patient's stability impacts outcomes for another in a nurse's assignment—originated directly from a challenging moment at a patient's bedside. "That clinical experience became a research question that no amount of secondary data analysis alone would have surfaced," Connell writes. To unlock this potential, Connell calls to:
- Create formally integrated clinician–scientist roles with protected research time.
- Align promotion and evaluation systems to recognize active clinical practice as an asset to scientific inquiry.
- Foster environments where nurses can safely draw upon lived experience without risking professional or scholarly credibility.
By building this infrastructure, Connell notes, the health care system can finally value the crucial insights nurses generate at the intersection of practice, research, and personal understanding.
