impact of innovative nurse-led initiatives on patient outcomes. Twelve additional projects received INQRI grants in September 2007 and grantees completed their work in August 2009. These teams addressed interventions to prevent falls, evidence-based nursing and chronic disease, pediatric nursing care, nurse workforce and hospital performance, and how to improve hospital discharge. Grants were awarded to 8 additional teams in September 2008 and could be, as noted, across all levels of care. Five new teams received funding in September 2009. These researchers are addressing the value of nursing in achieving
efficient, high-quality patient care. Currently, there is a call for proposals focused on dissemination and implementation of innovative care approaches implemented by interdisciplinary teams to improve patient outcomes.
Translating the Research
Ultimately, the goal of the INQRI work is that this investigator-initiated research will result in robust results that can be shared with policymakers, hospital administrators, and others who determine how nursing resources will be distributed to improve the quality and outcomes of patient care. To increase the probability that the findings of studies supported by the INQRI program are placed in the hands of and used by influential decision makers, INQRI is engaging key stakeholders on an ongoing basis to provide feedback and practical guidance to researcher teams. In addition to providing communications assistance to researchers to ensure that their work reaches a broad and diverse audience, the INQRI leadership team will produce syntheses that place the work of INQRI grantees in the context of similar research by others in the nursing and other health care fields. In the Journal, we have pulled together the work from several of the INQRI projects that address care of older adults. I am thrilled to share these with our readership, because I believe they provide some very useful information for those of us to use in the field. The work by Bobay and colleagues in this issue, for example, provides a critical foundation for intervention work to improve discharge success following acute care admissions for older adults. Clearly, there is a need to review how discharge education is being done, particularly among those aged 85 years and older. In addition to what we have published in the Journal, the following projects are potentially relevant to older adults, and I encourage you all to monitor for publications on these projects in the near future and to reflect on and apply findings to how we can specifically address and improve the care provided to older adults across the entire health care continuum.