Query about nursing research at St. Joseph Hospital

Question I received recently from a fellow nurse, and my response to her....

Hi Dana,
I am taking over the Nursing research council here at xxxxx and absolutely love your website. I love the idea of your journal club, can you give me some more details on how you got that set up and has it been successful.
Also, how are your meetings set up for the NRC. Do you just have an agenda and give updates on all projects or do you incorporate some work time in those meetings.
I appreciate any advice you can give me because I truly feel like I am floundering. I have been ... here for about 3 years and this new position lacks a team that is motivated and most are floundering like I am and it is important for me to instill motivation and direction. Please help.

xxx- Good luck... I've been at this for ~4 years, and have periods when I feel "success" and those when I wonder what's going on. Patient care is definitely the priority of staff - not nursing research.
My journal clubs have not been wildly successful in terms of #s attending. However, each session (5-6 per year generic sessions, and unit-based sessions upon request) has a heterogeneity of attendees (at this point, I'm still selecting the articles, and the nurses come... usually NOT having read the article). I give an article synopsis, emphasizing Why the authors did the study (I ususally do research articles), what they did (methods... briefly), what they found (briefly), and the so what? Then, the discussion usually takes off on how this might be applicable in our setting. Even though I've been disappointed in turnout, and in the fact that nurses aren't reading, the sessions (around 1 hour at lunchtime - everyone brings lunch) are usually lively, and I think the nurses love the time to really talk about nursing and what the topic is outside of the normal work environment. A couple have led to practice changes - one about using factsheets has led to several projects that use factsheets to disseminate knowledge, one on effects of shiftwork on nurses added to the discussion on whether nightshift nurses should be allowed to sleep on their breaks, etc.
Regarding our Research Council meetings. We meet 10 times per year for 2 hours. Up to this point, meetings have included mostly reports of activities. The first year I did a 20 minute "educational brief" on various research topics to bring folks up to speed on research terminology. Those have not been repeated, but we have new members all the time, so probably should be. We are embarking on a new venture this year .... Did You Know? posters. A task force is working on how to roll this out. Research council meetings (3-4 per year) will be spent actively working on these posters which will involve rotating materials on poster templates and "pushing" these out to units. Optimally, topics will be unit-specific. This is an idea as yet... so will keep you posted.