Feasibility Study on Establishing a Nursing Policy Think Tank at the University of Utah College of Nursing: A Policy Paper

This paper tells the cautionary tale of what happened when an overly ambitious doctoral project collided with structural and political realities in a college of nursing. The project as proposed would have undertaken a pilot feasibility study to explore the possibility of establishing a dedicated nursing policy think tank at the University of Utah College of Nursing (hereafter the College). A think tank dedicated to nursing policy research, development and analysis would create an environment where nurse policy-makers could come together to explore the issues facing nursing. The Institute of Medicine Report The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health (2011) was the inspiration for the project. The report clearly calls for nurses to become strong leaders in the American health care system (p. 7). Yet the chairperson of this seminal report was not a nurse, but a political scientist by training. The investigator postulates a nursing policy think tank as an entity that may help nurses gain a strong leadership voice. The Scholarly Project objectives were to prepare a literature review, feasibility study and policy paper. This research was underpinned by several theoretical frameworks and the Snow and Phillips due diligence Feasibility Matrix (2008), with the intent of determining whether the College and University could support the establishment of a nursing policy think tank. Methods to operationalize the project had been determined and approved. Content experts had been identified and contacted. Then, owing to a tangle of problems, anticipated and otherwise, the project as conceived could not be implemented. This policy paper explains what happened, the postulated root causes and recommendations to avoid such scholarly mishaps in the future.