NAC Member Profiles
Linda Burnes Bolton: Wear Your Advocate Hat
Linda Burnes Bolton, vice chair of the Initiative on the Future of Nursing, a joint initiative of the Institute of Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, remembers the day a nursing researcher told her that they conducted studies, but didn't see the value in getting involved with informing policy. Her reply was swift. "If that's it, you only do so-what research."Burnes Bolton, who also serves as Chief Nursing Officer and Director of Nursing Research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, wants INQRI researchers to begin thinking about impact and implication in tandem with their research questions. "We need to be thinking of that at the moment of testing the question: What are the implications [for patients, providers and health care quality]?"
She urges researchers to "wear the advocate hat" when speaking with funders, informing other research programs or speaking with key decision makers.
"You must be willing to speak out to succeed," she tells INQRI researchers.