Palestinian Critical Care Nursing Research Program: Building Clinical Competence Under Occupation
At Palestinian critical care units across the West Bank, nurses work under conditions few research traditions have studied seriously: chronic resource constraint, restricted patient movement, traumatised paediatric and neonatal populations, and an emerging professional pressure to engage with artificial intelligence tools designed in contexts that do not look like theirs. In January 2025, the Faculty of Nursing at Palestine Ahliya University consolidated five years of work into a structured research program asking one question: how is critical care nursing competence built and sustained in a Palestinian context of constrained resources and restricted movement, and what does the answer mean for nursing in similarly difficult settings across the region? Led by Dr. Amin Ayed with a core team of Drs. Ahmad Batran, Mohammad Abu Ejheisheh, Ibrahim Aqtam, Mohammed Farajallah, and Mohammed Malak, the program operates across three connected tracks: clinical practice in adult and neonatal intensive care; the psychological and professional development of Palestinian nursing students; and the emerging interface between nurses and artificial intelligence in clinical workflow. Partnerships span the Arab American University, An-Najah National University, Yarmouk University, Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan, the American University of the Middle East, Alexandria University, Hodeidah University, KU Leuven, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In 2025 alone, the program produced 32 Scopus-indexed publications, generating 143 citations within twelve months and an average Field-Weighted Citation Impact of 2.83, meaning the program is cited at 2.83 times the world average for its field. Headline studies appeared in BMC Nursing (FWCI 10.65), International Nursing Review, Journal of Transcultural Nursing, BMC Psychology, and PLOS ONE. Two papers reached 14 citations within their first year, an unusual velocity for nursing research from a small private university operating under occupation. The findings are translational, not abstract. The team documented that anxiety toward artificial intelligence among Palestinian nursing students correlates inversely with attitudes toward adopting it, with implications for how AI tools should be introduced into Arabic-language nursing education. They mapped the relationship between professional values and caring behaviour in Palestinian intensive care units, identifying culturally specific drivers absent from Western models. They quantified knowledge gaps in palliative care, sepsis assessment, and ventilator-associated pneumonia prevention, producing actionable baselines for hospital quality improvement. Beyond academic output, findings have shaped clinical practice in the field. Several West Bank intensive care units have adopted the team’s instruments for assessing nurse readiness, professional values, and burnout risk, and Palestinian Master’s nursing programs at partner institutions now include the studies in their reading lists. Members of the team have presented at conferences of the Palestinian Nurses and Midwives Syndicate and at regional nursing fora, and the program’s findings on AI anxiety have been picked up by Arab nursing education networks seeking to design culturally appropriate digital training.In a country where research budgets are minuscule, mobility is restricted, and hospital systems operate under permanent strain, the Palestine Ahliya nursing research program produces the global evidence on Palestinian critical care that would otherwise not exist. It is research as professional sovereignty.