Case Five: Faculty of Nursing

The stated purpose of conducting research in the Faculty of Nursing is to acquire and to develop new knowledge for enhancing professional growth in nursing as well as facilitating the serving of patients or other people. Generally, lecturers in this faculty are involved in a lot of research because faculty administrators try to build up a proper environment which encourages lecturers to conduct research. In addition, lecturers are generally eager to do research because this faculty has so many lecturers who have graduated with doctoral qualifications. Case Five said:

We try to create a suitable research environment. Our faculty does a lot of research projects because we realize the importance of research.

The Faculty of Nursing offers research funding that generates about ten percent of our faculty’s income, and lecturers also obtain research funding from government and overseas. Moreover, the Faculty of Nursing has its own database network that is linked to national and international nursing institutions. Both the topic and the form of the research depend on the nature of the field of teaching that aims to develop its services and could, for example, relate to the utilization of local intelligent knowledge such as to give birth by natural methods and how to use Thai herbs in therapeutic situations. The Faculty of Nursing conducts research in teams by joining with other organizations, and sometime it receives research funding from other countries. The respondent reported that the faculty has networks with all five regional (North, East, West, South, and North-East) nursing research units

in Thailand. In addition, the Dean of the faculty has received funding from Canada to do research relating to mothers and children.

The Faculty of Nursing has a research journal that has outside experts as peer reviewers. This Research journal invites outsiders to be peer reviewers in order to set up equal standards to the international journals. The Faculty has taken this approach rather than provide staff with publication funding in other Thai and international research journals, in addition to conference funding. Clearly, the Faculty of Nursing is eager to encourage lecturers to be involved with research, and as Case five suggested, the faculty provides several training topics. For instance, if lecturers have problems with statistics, experts are invited to teach them. Also, some international professors are invited to talk about the concepts of the research that they have carried out, and have been invited to be research counsellors. In addition, gaining high academic rank is also another motivation because generally Assistant Professors and Associate Professors must do research.

However, notwithstanding this positive environment for research, there are some obstructions that occur with both the new lecturers who have just graduated and staff who have been employed for a considerable time. Case five noted that:

We have two types of lecturers who did less research. The first is the new lecturer who has just graduated and second is the very old lecturer who has less enthusiasm and a high teaching workload. Research is hampered because sometimes they have to work overtime.

The respondent indicated that, in fact, the University has not provided direct financial support to the Faculty of Nursing to encourage them to carry out research. It provides only a policy that staff have Faculty to follow. Even under these conditions, however, Case five expressed the opinion that the Faculty has planned to slightly increase number of research outcomes and variety of works, and that:

In the future, we will put more emphasis on research which is based on National requirements, especially in the area of integrated research.

In summary, Case five stated that the reasons why staff in the Faculty of Nursing engage in research is to acquire and to develop new knowledge for enhancing both their own professional growth and that of the discipline generally. Research in the faculty broadly involves ways to improve patients’ treatment and services but attends particularly to the utilization of local intelligent knowledge.

It appears that lecturers in this faculty are keen to perform research tasks because the nature of the research environment has provided significant motivation for them, and, in addition, they have a great deal of ‘self-encouragement’. This latter attribute is probably linked to the fact hat many lecturers have obtained Doctoral qualifications and they are able to make use of the funds that the faculty has provided from the faculty’s own income as well as government and overseas sources.

The Faculty of Nursing has also provided many supporting facilities for research projects which directly contribute to the research outcomes produced by lecturers. For example, the faculty has its own database networks linked to National and International institutions. In addition, the Faculty of Nursing has specifically provided several research training seminars, and the lecturers have been encouraged to conduct research in teams by joining with members from other organizations and engaging experts to be research advisors.

Notwithstanding these very positive initiatives, in a similar way to other faculties there are factors that impact negatively on the development of research productivity such as (i) the lack of research skills of new lecturers, (ii) the low enthusiasm for research of old lecturers, and (iii) the overall high undergraduate workload.