What is the future?
Is a Doctorate in Your Future?
By Debra Wood, RN, contributor
A doctoral degree can open doors for nurses and help shape and advance their profession as researchers, faculty or leaders of business and industry. However, a serious shortage of doctorally prepared nurses exists and the number of new graduates decreased almost 10 percent last year.
“For nursing to continue to evolve, we are going to need to create new knowledge and verify what exists, and the way to do that is with the structure of a doctoral program in nursing,” said Dan Pesut, Ph.D., APRN, BC, FAAN, president of the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. “A Ph.D. enables a person to structure his or her curiosity in a useful way and contribute to a community of science, so care can be improved.”
Pesut’s interest in methods patients use to cope with disfigurement and disease led him to investigate how patients help themselves recover. He built on his findings to help other patients develop similar skills.
“I took a clinical curiosity about what patients were doing in the background and brought it into the light,” said Pesut, who is also a professor and chair of the department of Environments for Health at Indiana University School of Nursing in Indianapolis, Indiana. “You can take the invisible and make it visible through the research process.”
In addition, the degree offers prospects for personal growth and new career directions. It represents the highest credential in the field.
Nora Triola, Ph.D., RN, vice president of nursing and patient care services for Clarian Health Partners’ Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, routinely draws on skills she developed while pursuing her doctoral degree.
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Doctoral preparation expands your horizons as far as leadership opportunities within health care and industry systems,” said Karin Polifko-Harris, Ph.D., RN, CNAA, associate dean of academic and student affairs at the University of Florida College of Nursing in Gainesville, Florida.
Yet despite the benefits, nursing suffers from a severe shortage of doctorally prepared nurses. Eighty-eight universities offer doctoral degrees. Most of them—74—grant doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees. The rest offer a doctor of nursing education (Ed.D.), designed for educators; a doctor of nursing science (DNSc or DNS), with similar curriculum to a Ph.D.; or a doctor of nursing practice (DNP), with a focus on the application of research.
“It appeals to nurses working in practice, rather than focusing their careers on research activities in the academic community,” said Jean Bartels, Ph.D., RN, president of the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN). “People with a Ph.D. can still practice as well, but usually a Ph.D. leads to a lifetime of intellectual inquiry, creative scholarship and research.”
AACN reports 454 students graduated from a doctoral nursing program in 2003, and 3,496 were enrolled. Every year until 2012, 200 to 300 doctorally prepared faculty are expected to retire.
“When you cannot replace those with [nurses] in the pipeline, there you will be no one to teach nurses and it will exacerbate the nursing shortage,” Bartels said.
Aware of the problem, schools of nursing are looking for ways to
make the educational process easier for nurses. The University of Florida has formed a cooperative doctoral nursing program with three other north Florida universities. It blends interactive classroom distance-learning with clinical research conducted closer to home.
Linda Finke, RN, Ph.D., director of the Professional Development Center at Sigma Theta Tau International, said educators also are finding
ways to speed the time it takes to obtain a degree and to bring nurses into the programs earlier.
Nurses can expect to spend about three years obtaining a terminal degree, if they return to school full time, longer if they attend part time, as many nurses do. Nurses find it hard to leave established careers, teaching positions and families and to adjust to the lack of income, on top of the cost of tuition and books.
“We offer a stipend and scholarships but not to the manner most of us became accustomed to in our practice, and it’s a shock to the system,” said Gayle Page, DSNc, RN, FAAN, director of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing Ph.D. program.
Traditionally, nurses practiced for several years before pursing advanced degrees,
but many educators and other leaders in the field no longer feel that time providing hands-on care is a necessary prerequisite.
“We’ve had several students who go straight through, and they are doing great,” Page said. “If we practice five years between each degree, we’re going to be 10 years older than the basic science Ph.D., and the scientific lifetime from graduating to the time we retire is shorter by those years we spent time practicing.”
The University of Florida, as well as several other schools, offers a BSN to Ph.D. program. Students work on doctoral coursework while completing master’s level curriculum. Attending full time, they can attain a doctorate in about four years.
“It’s a mechanism to encourage bright, talented BSN graduates to move into graduate study without the traditional start-stop,” said Ann Horgas, RN, Ph.D., associate dean for research at the University of Florida College of Nursing.
“The nature of doctoral study completely differs from undergraduate work and master’s level work,” Horgas continued. “There is a socialization process and that involves working directly with faculty and getting immersed in the research environment.”
When considering a doctoral degree, nurses should carefully assess the institution’s faculty expertise, not just their credentials but whether they have experience conducting research similar to the candidate’s area of interest.
AACN does not accredit doctoral programs. The association has published guidelines outlining quality indicators of research-focused doctoral programs. Finding the right faculty match is critical.
“If you want to be a researcher, you have got to be in a relationship with a faculty person where you are shoulder to shoulder learning the ropes,” Page said. “If you do not have a good mentoring situation, it is tough to do well after you graduate.”
Armed with a doctoral degree, new knowledge and the power of scholarship, nurses can steer the future of nursing as they teach, lead our hospitals and investigate the most effective ways to care for patients.
“A doctorate is the best thing you can do if you like to learn and love nursing and the people we care for,” Page said. “We can move forward in our preparation, so we can care for them even better. That’s what it is all about.”
Resource: Indicators Of Quality In Research-Focused Doctoral Programs In Nursing 
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