GRANT (Getting Research And Nurses Together), a series of educational programs sponsored by The Center for Excellence in Nursing Practice and funded in part by the Hahnemann Hospital Foundation, is well underway. Twenty two teams from BWH, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Children’s Hospital, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute are enrolled in the program that launched in October 2002.
Michelle DeSisto, RN, MSN, assistant clinical director for the Cardiovascular Diagnostic and Interventional Center (CDIC) at BWH comments, “The GRANT Program has provided a structured approach to the research process by taking us step by step and imposing a timeline to help us achieve our goal of designing a study for IRB approval.” DeSisto, who is working with Margaret Angel, CDIC educator, and Lisa Downey, staff nurse are formulating the project on the comparison of comfort level and return to functionality in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention via transradial versus transfemoral approach. The team seeks to study differences in comfort levels in patients who have had a transradial versus a transfemoral procedure. To date, the team has conducted a literature review and is currently critiquing the existing research on this topic.