Maintain pressure on reforms to protect NHSNurse research loses support of charitable trust
The economic downturn has forced the closure of the Smith & Nephew Foundation, an independent charitable trust that has provided funding for nursing research for more than 35 years.
Although funding will continue for those nurses who have already been allocated awards, no new ones will be issued and the foundation will officially close at the end of this month, said the chair of the foundation’s trustees Jim Dick.
‘Although we will continue to make donations in other ways, sadly these will be the last of the awards, and the last of the work of the foundation,’ he said.
Mr Dick said that a review of corporate compliance policies meant Smith & Nephew no longer felt able to support the foundation.
The imminent demise of the foundation coincides with a warning from a leading nurse academic last month at the RCN International Research Conference in Cardiff that more rigorous scientific approaches are needed in nursing research.
Nurse research too often focused on experience and perception rather than measurement of direct patient care, said Professor Dame Jill Macleod Clark, deputy dean in the faculty of medicine, health and life sciences at Southampton University and also a trustee of the Smith & Nephew Foundation.
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