This special edition of Medical Care provides an overview of the Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative (INQRI) program’s strategy, goals, and impact, highlighting cross-cutting issues addressed by the initiative.

Background

• Citing the lack of essential evidence linking nursing to the quality of patient care, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) launched the INQRI program in 2005 to generate, disseminate, and translate research to understand how nurses contribute to and can improve patient care quality.
• This supplement describes the accomplishments of the INQRI program, discusses current issues in research design and implementation, and places INQRI research within the larger context regarding advances in nursing science.

Key Findings

• A review of scholarly literature published in 2004 and 2009 found that the evidence linking nursing to quality of care has grown.
• A paper on INQRI’s work on measurement of quality of care, revealed the need for additional comprehensive measures.
• A paper examining INQRI’s focus on interdisciplinary collaboration found that such collaboration can enhance methodological approaches and result in substantive changes in health delivery systems.
• A paper on the methodological challenges in health care implementation research identified the need for standardized terms and research designs.
• A paper addressing INQRI’s commitment to translating research into practice described dissemination strategies and lessons learned.
• The final paper discussed how the INQRI program has contributed to the current evidence regarding the business case for nursing.