How did the Nursing Health Services Research Unit come about?
In the late 1980s, we were experiencing a lot of dissatisfaction in nursing. At about this time, the Meltz report came out, which was a first-time-ever expos on nursing in Canada. The results suggested that things were not going well in the shop. The government decided it needed to pay attention to this, and so there was a call, in late 1989, for people to submit proposals to look at the quality of work life for nurses. That [request] could be taken very broadly and since that is my area of research, I decided we would put in a proposal in collaboration with a group at McMaster University. We believed we were the only two groups at the time that would be equipped to go after the funding, and we didn’t want to compete against each other. So that’s how it went and how it’s been funded ever since. The first funding, I think, was $175,000 at each site, for infrastructure. Q: What exactly did that cover? A: It covered one research assistant and one secretary, plus some start-up money for re
