So I was in my thinking chamber today (the shower) when I got to thinking about the DNP as the practice doctorate for NP's. I feel that the DNP has turned into a cloak and dagger form of PhD in nursing. I'm told in my masters classes that there is a big push to put out more nursing doctorates mostly for research (see i knew the DNP was a covert PhD!). There is not much to delineate the two and it got me thinking about what would NP's want for a true practice doctorate.
Currently DNP's are touted by educators, nursing management, nursing "leaders" (god I hate when they call themselves that), informatics, nurse practitioners, etc. It seems the DNP is a catch all for anything related to nursing which I find to be a terrible idea. Nurse anesthesia jumped ship on this idea and created their own practice doctorate the DNAP so why couldnt NP's. I dont want to be lumped into a degree with non-prescriptive, non-patient seeing nurse doctorates. Since a lot of what the NP does is specific to patient care, why not have a clinical doctorate related more to that instead of more theory, research, ethics, etc. I'm fairly certain my masters covered all of those pretty good and if I wanted to do any of those thats what the PhD is for! It's to the point now that stigmatized by even getting a DNP as in I dont want it for the fact that it does little for NP's. Even if they changed how it functions how would you tell that for those who already have it?
So what do you all want in a true practice doctorate? How can NP's distinguish themselves from catch all DNP. Just some food for thought and hopefully some good ideas.
