When we talk with nurses about publishing their work, we often focus on the benefits to the author. Publications build a CV, contribute to promotion and tenure, establish expertise, and, depending on where you work, may be an expected part of your role. Those are all perfectly legitimate reasons to publish, but they can obscure something more fundamental: dissemination is also an ethical responsibility. When we undertake scholarly work, particularly work that depends on the participation and contributions of others, I believe we assume an obligation to make what we learn available to others.

The Gift of Participation

This is particularly important in research involving human participants. Think about what we ask of people when they agree to participate in our studies. We ask for their time and information, and sometimes we ask them to tell us about experiences that are personal, difficult, or painful. People participate for many reasons, of course, but one reason is often the hope that what we learn from them might eventually help someone else.

I like to think of research participation as a gift. Someone has given us something—their time, their experiences, their information—because we told them that we were trying to learn something. Once we accept that gift, I think we incur an ethical obligation to do our best to complete the process. That obligation is grounded in respect for the participant, truthfulness about the purpose of the work, and gratitude for what they have contributed. Conducting the study and analyzing the data are not quite enough. If the findings remain in a dissertation, a final project report, or a file on somebody’s computer, the participant’s contribution has not traveled very far. If you have conducted a sound study and have findings that contribute to nursing knowledge, write the manuscript and submit it for publication. Publishing the work is part of finishing the work.

When Things Don’t Go According to Plan

The obligation to disseminate doesn’t disappear when the research doesn’t go according to plan. Sometimes the findings are not what you expected. A well-designed study may not support the hypothesis. An intervention may not work. Two groups may not be different. The relationship everyone expected to find may simply not be there. Those findings may be surprising, disappointing, or even quite exciting—but they still tell us something, and other researchers need to know about them. Otherwise, someone may spend considerable time and money asking essentially the same question, recruiting another group of participants, and heading down a road that has already been traveled. Findings that challenge our expectations help us understand the boundaries of what we know, refine the questions we ask next, and sometimes recognize that our original assumptions weren’t very good ones. That’s how knowledge develops, too.

Sometimes the findings aren’t the problem; the study itself simply doesn’t turn out the way you planned. Recruitment may fall far short of the intended sample, an intervention may not be implemented consistently, an instrument may not perform as expected, or you may recognize after the fact that the design has limitations you didn’t anticipate. Perhaps the project is simply not strong enough to support the traditional research report you originally intended to write. Here, too, there is an ethical obligation: to be honest about what happened, what the study can and cannot tell us, and what may still be worth sharing.

That doesn’t mean the only remaining destination is the proverbial file drawer. Instead, ask a different question: What did we learn that would be useful for someone else to know? Perhaps the important contribution is what you learned about recruitment, feasibility, implementation, measurement, or the realities of conducting this kind of study in this particular setting. Maybe the experience belongs in a methods paper, a clinical or scholarly reflection, a quality-improvement report, a brief report, or another format entirely. The answer is not to disguise the limitations or try to make the study sound better than it was. Be candid about what happened and reframe the manuscript around the contribution the work can honestly make. Sometimes what went wrong is precisely the information that can keep the next investigator from making the same mistake.

An Obligation to Nursing

We sometimes talk about ethics as though it consists primarily of prohibitions: do no harm, protect confidentiality, avoid conflicts of interest, obtain informed consent, and don’t misrepresent what you have done. Those things matter enormously, but ethics also asks something more of us. It asks what we owe to one another, to our patients, and to the profession of nursing. I believe one of those obligations is to share what we know. Knowledge that remains tucked away in a dissertation, project report, conference presentation, or computer file cannot inform practice, challenge assumptions, prevent someone from repeating our mistakes, or help another nurse ask a better question. Dissemination, then, is not simply the last item to check off on a research or scholarly project. It is part of our responsibility as members of a profession whose knowledge is meant, ultimately, to serve others.

Learning How to Finish the Journey

Of course, saying “You should disseminate your work” is considerably easier than actually doing it.

For many nurses, the problem isn’t that they don’t have anything worth sharing. The problem is that nobody ever taught them how scholarly publishing works. How do you choose the right journal? What does an editor actually want? How do you take a project and turn it into a manuscript? How do you know when the manuscript is finished? What happens after you click Submit? And what in the world are you supposed to do when two peer reviewers give you completely contradictory advice?

Those questions are a large part of why I created Writer’s Camp. I have spent much of my career as an editor, author, and teacher of scholarly writing, and one thing I have learned is that successful authors aren’t born knowing how to do this. They learn the process. At Writer’s Camp, we try to make that process less mysterious with practical guidance about writing, journals, peer review, revision, editorial decisions, and the many other parts of publishing that can be baffling when you encounter them for the first time.

We also try not to take ourselves too seriously. Scholarly publishing is important. It can also be occasionally ridiculous. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

The important thing is to finish the journey. If patients or colleagues contributed to your work, honor what they gave you. If your findings were not what you expected, consider what others can learn from them. If the project itself didn’t go according to plan, think about whether the experience contains a different lesson worth sharing. And if you have learned something through practice or scholarship that could help other nurses, find an appropriate way to share it.

And if the part standing between you and dissemination is figuring out how to write and publish the darn thing, come visit us at Writer’s Camp. That’s what we’re there for.