Nursing At The NIH Clinical Center

Clinical Research Nurses at the NIH Clinical Center are integral health care team members who provide and coordinate patient care in a research setting. The role of the nurse at the Clinical Center spans development from the new graduate nurse to the senior clinician. Nurses are experts in providing complex comprehensive nursing care to a specialized group of research participants. 

Nurses are an essential component of the intramural clinical research program. The career path for nurses includes a core component of advancement in research skills and supports graduate and post-graduate training. Research training for nurses, like its medical counterpart, is integrated into specialty practice training. 

In January 2007, Clinical Center Nursing at NIH launched a four-year strategic plan to lead an international effort to define the specialty practice of clinical research nursing. Our goal is to take this definition to the level of detail and consensus required to create a certification process for nurses practicing in clinical research. This initiative is called Clinical Research Nursing 2010, or CRN2010.