The aim of this paper is to provide a report of the progress made in the first phase of the national initiative established to identify priorities for R&D for the nursing professions, which was reported earlier in this journal (Kitson et al., 1997). Here we describe how the methods were used, discuss the primary and secondary results achieved in the first phase of the initiative and present an outline of how it is proposed to take these results forward in a second and more strategic phase. The aim of the first phase was to explore the feasibility of establishing a national systematic process for identifying priorities for R&D in the nursing professions*. It is now proposed to establish a strategic alliance for research in nursing, midwifery and health visiting and these proposals are summarised at the end of the paper.
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