Hines, S.Ramsbotham, J.Coyer, F.2025-07-232025-07-232022BMC Nursing, 2022; 21(1):114-1-114-141472-69551472-6955https://hdl.handle.net/2440/146252Background: Considerable resources have been expended, both in universities and health workplaces to improve nurses’ abilities to interact with research and research literature to enable their engagement with evidence-based practice. Despite these efforts, a considerable number of nurses experience difficulty with research literature and are reluctant to use it in practice. Aims: This study aimed to explore the experiences and perceptions of Registered Nurses when they have been required to read and understand research literature for work or education. Design: A qualitative descriptive study using online and in-person focus groups. Methods: Focus groups (online and in-person) were conducted between June and November 2020. Forty participants were included. We used focus group recordings and field notes to collect data. Transcribed records of these focus groups were coded on the basis of similarity of meaning and then subjected to thematic analysis. Results: Three distinct themes were identified from the data: ’coming into learning about research’, fitting research into the reality of nursing life’, and ’working towards using research.’ Participants described their early experiences in learning about research, experiences both positive and negative in integrating research into practice, and their personal strategies for reading and using research, particularly in the context of significant anxiety about understanding the content of methods and results sections of quantitative research articles. Conclusion: This study goes beyond the barriers and facilitators dichotomy that has been the majority of the conversation about nurses’ evidence-based practice engagement previously, and explores the issues underlying aversion to research literature. Many nurses struggle with the language, numbers, and/or statistics used in research and this requires educational interventions suited to the problem and the population.en© The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.Nursing; Research; Research literacy; Focus groups; Qualitative research; Mathematics anxietyJournal article10.1186/s12912-022-00877-3698602Hines, S. [0000-0003-0326-3546]