RESEARCH PROGRAMS? Sorry, but none of these “research programs” were initially planned to extend beyond the first study.  I cannot image how a new researcher could possibly outline a trajectory of several projects. The actual truth is, once I had completed the first program, I had more questions to follow up on, thus became a researcher with several simultaneous strands of research. Secretly, I loved it. I could work in one area in the morning, supposing falls, then switch in the afternoon to different project, such as breast feeding.

• Patient Fall Research was the first real headache, for clinical nurses kept calling and emailing, wanting more information. I had naively thought that predicting who was going to fall would solve the problem. But almost instantly I realize that the fall may be prevented by simply increasing restraint use. So this project has continued for three decades, working from understand the actual fall to environmental concerns, I am now focusing on factors inherent in the patient that trigger the fall.

• The Clinical Nursing Research studies, initially started as projects initiated by students I was supervising, grew into a fascination with Concepts and Mid-Range Theories, and then into more seriously focusing on exploring Suffering and Comforting, and developing nursing theory.

     Interest with the cultural response to pain began in my doctoral program, with childbirth selected as the pain response: it was relatively common, relatively scheduled and patterned, and later morphed into studies in extreme pain in trauma victims and ultimately non-pharmaceutical modes of pain enduring and relief (ie: comforting).

• Women’s Health.  My other dissertation in infant feeding was timely and continued for a decade, exploring intercultural patterns of infant feeding for maintaining lactation in women returning to the workforce.  With a later interest in in menarche, these studies “fit” under the label of Women’s Health, along with studies in breast cancer and others.

• Research Methods. Doing such research demanded a “toolbox”of Research Methods, and when this failed to provide solutions to problems I wanted to understand, I consulted others, then turned to developing qualitative research methods and mixed-method research designs. Responding to student questions always aids in clarifying one’s own methods, and writing editorials, articles and books became almost a hobby.  Most of the development of 'general' qualitative methods largely took place within The IIQM.