From clinical problem… to carrying out research EONS Research Workshops bring together nurses from all over Europe to develop their ideas. Here three participants of a workshop in the UK in 2011, describe how three days of sharing ideas and intense debate gave them the confidence to develop their research proposal, and ultimately advanced their careers. 18
Michela Piredda was a clinical nurse at the University Hospital Campus Bio-Medico. She is now a researcher at the Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome, Italy. The workshop offered a valuable opportunity to learn more about research, to be guided through the research proposal process and to meet wonderful people from all around Europe. We had fun together and I kept in contact with several of them, meeting at international congresses, sharing further information about our projects, and establishing professional collaborations. I found very useful the comments and critiques of my proposal made by both the workshop leaders and participants. Based on these suggestions, and after discussion with my mentor in Italy, I changed the topic of my research, refined it and presented it at the exam for entering the PhD in Nursing at Tor Vergata University in Rome a few months later. Now I’m in the third year of my PhD and conducting a mixed methods multicentre study about oncology patients’ dependence