Nursing and Biobanking

Abstract

Nurses are a pivotal component of the translational research movement and apply scientific discoveries to the healthcare and clinical practice fields. Biobanking is also an important factor in furthering translational research by providing biospecimens and related clinical data to the research community. The effectiveness of any biobanking effort necessitates the enrollment of large numbers of diverse participants, which signifies a need for the nursing profession to secure the knowledge necessary to impact biobanking practices and to promote participant advocacy. In addition, biobanks provide the volume, variety, veracity, and velocity of data that can address the challenges of nursing research. Nurse scientists, research nurse coordinators and clinical research and practice nurses must be informed about the various benefits and risks associated with biobanking in addition to ethical issues surrounding informed consent, participant privacy, and the release of research results. Ultimately, nurses need to possess competencies to facilitate biobanking practices both at the research bench and at the point of care.

Keywords: Biobanking; Ethics; Genetics and genomics; Informed consent; Nursing competencies; Nursing practice.