The Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, Rome (Italy), is a Research Institute whose main objectives are to ensure the health care for children and to pursue research projects in the biomedical field as well as in health services management and organisation. In December 2007, the hospital inaugurated a new service, namely the Unit for Nursing and Allied Health Personnel Professional Development, Continuing Education and Nursing Research with the objective of improving nursing research. The aim of this paper is to describe the framework of nursing research of children and the steps to improve nursing research in the hospital. Nursing research in paediatric nursing is oriented towards ‘family-centred care’: this means that the research questions must arise from the relative nursing care, and that the results of nursing research must return to paediatric nursing practice. The first step of the research programme has been the creation of a research group within the hospital. The research group is, for all of us, an important opportunity offered by the hospital, an occasion for learning and for expanding scientific and methodological expertise. The research group is multidisciplinary and allows comparison and sharing between peers of elements concerning paediatric nursing research; it is a research laboratory, stimulating research and reaching all the nursing staff throughout the hospital. Members of the research group have taken part in a study on nursing participation in research during recent years, as well as on research priorities for the future.