UCSF and the DNP

Nursing Students Post Graduate

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I'm wondering if anyone has updated information on thoughts among UCSF faculty and administrators about offering the DNP. I know that there was a formal decision not to offer this degree (there's even a paper on the decision-making process that went into that, if you're curious -- "Shared faculty governance: A decision-making framework for evaluating the DNP") - but I believe that process happened five years ago, and a lot has happened in terms of other nursing schools beginning to offer then DNP since then.

Does anyone, maybe current students at UCSF, know anything more about this?

(By the way, I don't mean this to spark debate about the basic merits of the DNP as a degree - there are plenty of other threads on allnurses for that!)

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Specializes in Critical Care, Progressive Care.

I am a current student at UCSF.

To the best of my knowledge there are no plans to shift to the DNP in the near future. The feeling round here when they looked at this a few years ago was that there is no evidence that suggests the added education of the DNP results in a better outcomes for patients or better incomes for practitioners. Additionally, the school receives a large amount of funding from the state for the MS program. The state would need to change the funding formula in order to make the DNP a reality here.

That said, there appears to a national movement towards the DNP. I suspect that UCSF will eventually join the fold on this issue. Also, our new new Dean, David Vlahov, may have ideas on this that differ from our most excellent and well respected previous Dean, Kathy Dracup. Things may well change under Dean Vlahov's leadership.

Also, the faculty are paying close attention to the IOM report "The Future of Nursing." This may move things in the DNP direction.

What is your concern? Do you want to come to UCSF but you want a DNP? If you are interested in UCSF, I would urge you to not worry about it and do the MS program. It is very good indeed. If you want a DNP, it is pretty easy to upgrade an MS to a DNP at a variety of institutions - many of them offer MS-DNP as a distance learning thing. The DNP is currently conceived as a three year post baccalaureate or 1 year post masters program.

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Thanks for the insight, czyja! I'm not sure yet if the DNP is my ultimate goal - particularly since the curriculum can be quite different from school to school. But I am interested to see where a school like UCSF goes with it!

Are people feeling positive about the selection of Vlahov as the new dean?

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As of October, 2012, the Faculty Senate voted 80% to move forward with a post MSN DNP curriculum development.

http://senate.ucsf.edu/2012-2013/son-10-12-12-ResultsReport-DNPTaskforceVote.pdf

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