Be a Bedside Scientist

Our research school teaches you the skills you need to research best practices

A Spoonful of Medicine

Julie Fulcher, R.N., researched the best way to rehydrate children suffering from diarrhea and the evidence points to Pedialyte. Now she and other emergency department nurses are educating parents, like those of our daycare students, on the benefits of using Pedialyte at home.

Could reducing stress in open-heart surgery patients impact their length of stay? Could a new type of wound dressing heal burns faster? Could a daily rest period reduce delirium in ICU patients? These are questions our nurses asked. On the front lines of health care, you see what works and what doesn’t work for patients. This naturally leads to questions about how you can improve care for patients. Well, at Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network, we can teach you the research skills you need to find scientifically proven answers so that you can provide the best possible patient care.

Our Bedside Scientist Institute (BSI) - “a school within the hospital,” the only of its kind in the nation - was developed on the premise that research plays a central role in best patient care and that the bedside clinician can be an ideal scientist when given the necessary research and evidence-based practice training and support. In fact, evidence indicates that patients who receive care based on the best evidence from well-designed studies experience 28 percent better outcomes (Heater et al. 1988).

The BSI program helps teach staff nurses the steps of research including how to conduct a literature search, critique that literature, define a hypothesis and study design, and what to do with the data you collect so you can take that knowledge from the classroom into patients’ rooms. Our school is such a unique opportunity for nurses that the American Nurses Credentialing Center has asked our permission to share our research model with hospitals across the country!

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