Nursing research will always be committed to the advancement of nursing practice, advocacy and policy that affect people’s quality of life. The researches nurses undertake continue to translate in the improvement of the quality of care as these reflect their commitment in the development of our nursing profession. I have seen how nursing researchers in our country have taken the trajectory of using multiple philosophical and theoretical underpinnings in their researches. This is a manifestation of the continuous search for various methods and/or methodologies, as a rigorous scientific inquiry in search for answers and/or finding effective strategies to achieve health goals for our people and profession. This issue of the Philippine Journal of Nursing illustrates the outputs of our nurses from various fields of practice.

Dones et al.’s Preliminary study on the Work Environment of Nurses in the Philippines describes work environment variables affecting Filipino nurses, and determines the degree of nurses’ job satisfaction, as well as their intention of remaining in their present work environment. This study showed “that the lowest positive responses were in the Physiologic and Safety Needs but despite this result, the nurses reported high job satisfaction and intend to remain in their present work environment.” Carsola and Palaganas’ article, Nursing, Nightingale and Beyond: Voices, Dialogues and Talks of the Future explored and grounded the voices of nurses in contemporary times, and unraveled nurses’ situations for the purpose of generating a substantive theory to guide and refine nursing practice. The study depicts a picture of struggles, successes, and potential solutions to the predicaments surrounding the nursing profession, thus having potential in improving nursing practice and policy based on the framework that emerged from the study.

Recent developments in nursing research reveal the increasing conduct of systematic literature reviews, meta-analyses of published data, and meta-analyses of individual data (pooled reanalyses). These are means of jointly summarizing and assessing different studies on a single topic due to the rising number of scientific publications. A Systematic Literature Review provides an overview of the state of research on a given topic, and enables an assessment of the quality of individual studies. It also allows the results of different studies to be evaluated together when these are inconsistent (Bettaby-Saltikov, 2012; Whittemore & Knafl, 2005). This is exemplified by Serafica and Gatlin’s work, as it summarizes the current recent literature in examining the effectiveness of web-based interventions to promote healthy lifestyles related to anthropometric measurements in adult individuals with various health conditions and status. Their article, Web-based Interventions Among Adults: Relevance to Anthropometric Indicators reported overall positive changes that “may prove useful information of effectiveness of web-based interventions relative to physiological outcomes such as anthropometric measurements. These programs can inform transformative practice and improvement of global health.” On the other hand, a meta-analysis is a statistic method to pool effect estimates from individual studies to one ‘meta’ result (Cooper, H. et al.,20088). Based on the premise that mental health professionals need to develop interventions that are evidence-based and cost-effective, Lacalle’s article, The Effect of Psychoeducation for Depression: A Meta-Analysis 2010-2016 examined randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and the overall effectiveness of psychoeducation for depression. Results suggest that psychoeducation has low effect on depression indicating that longer and more interactive approach can be done to ensure its long-term and maximal effectiveness. The findings provide valuable information for future psychoeducation to improve content, design, quality, and process that will benefit patients with depression.