[janhetherington]

Can anyone recommend a good online PhD in nursing program, or know of a source for a list of such programs? Thanks!

[VickyRN]

This should be of immense help in your search. Press release (12/13/07) by NLN:

Quality of Online Doctoral Programs Examined NLN's Nursing Education Perspectives Looks into Latest Strategy for Boosting Nurse Faculty Credentials to Promote Standards of Excellence in Nursing Education

New York, NY – December 13, 2007 – A well-documented shortage of PhD-prepared nurse educators has prompted the creation of online doctoral-level programs that may be delivered to those currently employed. Thus, nurse educators holding master's degrees now have increasing opportunity to continue their education without having to drop other professional commitments or leave their families behind to do so. Leaders in nursing education agree that the persistent and acute shortage of nurse faculty, fueling the nation's shortage of nurses entering clinical practice, has made it imperative to enable nurse educators of the future to remain on the job while enhancing their academic credentials. But, just how effective are online doctoral programs? Are the pedagogical practices employed as good as those found in traditional classrooms? Is the training as rigorous? Do online doctoral candidates develop the necessary mentoring relationships with their professors? Are collaborative research relationships with fellow students facilitated or impeded by distance learning? And finally, how easily are the educational methods and scholarly concepts learned online translated into live teaching strategies and effectiveness in the classroom? To answer these questions, Debra Woodard Leners, PhD, RN, PNP, CNE, Vicki W. Wilson, PhD, RN, and Kathleen L. Sitzman, MS, RN, examined previously established benchmarks in higher education and nursing education, which they used to create an evaluative matrix for ongoing review of online doctoral programs in nursing. They then field-tested the matrix by evaluating the online doctoral program at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley. Drs. Leners and Wilson teach in the program (Dr. Leners is the program coordinator and director of the School of Nursing); Ms. Sitzman, an assistant professor of nursing at Weber State University in Ogden, UT, is enrolled in it. Lending their research even greater significance is the fact that Northern Colorado is also the site of a nationally designated Center of Excellence in Education, giving nurse faculty in the doctoral program there access to best pedagogical practices and guidelines and standards of excellence. In their analysis, the authors took into account feedback from both doctoral-level faculty and students in Northern Colorado's online doctoral program. The students typically are master's-level faculty teaching elsewhere. Among the positive points to emerge: Students deem online doctoral study rigorous and challenging. Meaningful, enriching, and frequent online contact between faculty and students indicate the potential for life-long mentoring relationships. Student interaction through email and online chat rooms has engendered close collaborative and supportive peer relationships. Online doctoral study has enhanced the academic environments of the institutions where the students currently teach. Leners', Wilson's, and Sitzman's findings appear in the current issue of the NLN's peer-reviewed journal, Nursing Education Perspectives ("Twenty-first Century Doctoral Education: Online with a Focus on Nursing Education," Nov.-Dec., Vol. 28, No. 6). The article can be found at http://nln.allenpress.com/pdfserv/i1536-5026-028-06-0332.pdf.