Remembering nursing policy research: a bibliometric study of published nursing research.

In August 1996, I started work at the newly created Centre for Policy in Nursing Research. It was an initiative proposed jointly by Christine Hancock, then general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, and Nick Black, professor of health services research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and funded by the Nuffield Trust. The centre was located in the school's Health Services Research Unit. The director was Anne Marie Rafferty. Though I think it is accurate to say that it was the UK's first centre set up to examine research policy in nursing, our work carried on a tradition of the Nursing Policy Studies Centre at Warwick University, established by Professor Jane Robinson and Phil Strong, who had worked at the School of Hygiene before his death in 1995. One of our pieces of work was a bibliometric study of published nursing research, and it is that article that underpins this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]