[The assessment of the impact of education and support to nursing research on nurses' scientific production in an Emilia Romagna Hospital].

Introduction: In Italy research conducted by non medical professions is scarce also for the lack of knowledge on methods. At Rizzoli hospital in Bologna in 2006 a Centre for research to educate and support health professionals was implemented.
Aim: To assess the impact of the research centre on number of research articles and protocols produced by nurses.
Methods: Interrupted time series. In the five years before and after the implementation of the centre data on the number of protocols approved by Ethical Committee with a nurse as principal investigator and on the number of articles published on impacted journals with a nurse as first author were collected. The number of nurses authors of the publications was also collected.
Results: For all the variables an increasing trend, starting from 2006 was observed, with statistically significant differences from 2008 for the number of research protocols presented (p=0.037), the number of nurses authors of scientific articles (p=0.027). Although the number of publications on impacted journals increased from 2006, differences were not statistically significant after 2008.
Conclusions: An hospital based Centre for education and support to research for health professionals may facilitate the scientific and research production.