The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one of the nation’s largest healthcare foundations, plans to award $2.3 million in grants for research to improve the quality of nursing care in America.

Grants of up to $300,000 will be given to eight research projects as part of the foundation’s Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative, a program designed to produce and collect information on how nurses contribute to the quality of care patients receive. The foundation, which recently made the announcement, hopes to analyze how nurses contribute to high quality patient care among multiple providers and across many care settings, including long-term care.

Nurses comprise more than half of the nation’s caregivers, but little research exists showing the connection between their efforts and improved quality of care for patients, according to the foundation This round of grants, which will be rolled out over the next two years, is the third stage and final stage of the initiative, which his so far given $19 million for nursing research.

More information is available at www.rwjf.org and www.inqri.org.