Nursing at Texas Children's Hospital
Nursing research fellowship program explores new frontiers

Today’s nurses are much more than the stereotypical demure helpmates of the past. Many are involved in active research to improve patient care, and Texas Children’s is leading the way with an innovative new research fellowship program.

Funded by The Auxiliary at Texas Children’s, the program provides training, mentorship and the essential element of time to help advanced practice nurses grow into independent researchers. Participants are chosen from graduates of the hospital’s Scholars program, which trains about 12 nurses each year in basic-level research.

Fellows are mentored by Ph.D. nurse-researchers and given time off from their job duties one day each week to conduct research. Dr. Marilyn Hockenberry, a Ph.D. nurse-researcher, director of Texas Children’s Center for Clinical Research and professor of pediatrics at Baylor, says this combination is what sets Texas Children’s apart.

“Texas Children’s is committed to making a difference,” says Hockenberry, “No other children’s hospital has the vision to nurture and support nurse researchers on this level.”

Although this is only the program’s second year, other hospitals are taking notice. Hockenberry’s team made a presentation about the program at the national meeting of the Society of Pediatric Nurses.

This year’s four fellows are exploring diverse fields of study to improve the lives and health of children and families.

Kimberly Childers
Now a pediatric nurse practitioner in the emergency center, Kimberly Childers started working at Texas Children’s 10 years ago as a nursing student. Her research interests are pediatric emergency care and parental use of the Internet for pediatric advice.

“Nursing must keep improving care through careful and rigorous research to answer the questions that will occur as our knowledge of the complex human body grows,” she says.
The fellowship program has been vital to Childers’ research because it allows her to be mentored by experts in research.

“I have the best of both worlds – mentoring and support from the research team in emergency medicine and the Center for Clinical Research,” she says.

Brenda Clark
A pediatric nurse practitioner in Texas Children’s Liver Center, Brenda Clark researches issues related to pediatric liver disease. Her first project explores the effectiveness on stress and anxiety of a support group for parents of children with liver disease. The second, which compares two drugs used to prevent infection after liver transplants, will be presented this summer at the International Liver Transplant Society meeting in Barcelona, Spain.

“The fellowship program is vital to my research because it provides the guidance and support needed by a novice researcher,” she says. “It allows me the time, funding and guidance to learn the research process, to have the space and tools, and to initiate and complete several projects.”

Angela Ethier
Angela Ethier is faculty liaison between the University of Texas (UT) Health Science Center School of Nursing and Texas Children’s, as well as a pediatric nursing faculty member and doctoral student at UT Health Science Center. Previously, she worked in Texas Children’s Cancer Center for eight years.

“Nurses want to provide the best care possible, and we have a responsibility to do so,” she says. “Important clinical questions are raised daily, and research makes it possible to answer some of them and provide scientific evidence for the care we provide.”

Ethier, whose research focuses on nurses’ job satisfaction and end-of-life care for children with cancer, says mentoring is essential to learning and performing research.

Barbara Montagnino
Barbara Montagnino, a clinical nurse specialist in the progressive care unit (PCU) and nurse in pediatric urology for 18 years, says nursing research is important for many reasons.

“Nursing research contributes to improvement in patient care, establishes credibility within and outside the profession and enhances the art and science of nursing,” Montagnino says. “We obtain information that broadens our knowledge about a nursing problem or phenomenon, then we apply what we’ve found out.”

Her research has focused on the stress of parents whose children have tracheostomies (surgical procedures in which a permanent opening into the trachea is created through the front of the neck) and gastrostomies (surgical placement of a feeding tube into the stomach), as well as the correlation between nurses’ job satisfaction and retention. Future research will center on ethical issues encountered by pediatric nurses.