DNP for Nurse Educators?

[ellenhuenink]

One of the biggest debates that is currently ongoing within the DNP community is whether a DNP should be required for nurse educators. Should a DNP be required for nurse educator positions (either within academia or in hospitals on the floors)? Is a master's degree sufficient for these roles? Should classes specific to the discipline of education be included for nurse educators? Should there be a separate track within DNP programs created specifically for nurse educators?

[Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP]

Welcome to Allnurses, great questions too.

These are certainly hot topics. Since it's now been settled as a consequence of the DNP evolution that a "practice doctorate" encompasses all areas of "nursing practice" from advanced nursing practice to leadership/administration to nursing education, schools have taken the liberty to offer DNP's of all flavors.

There are now DNP's with Nursing Education focus such as the ones at USA, American Sentinel, and probably some others. I think one of the questions in nursing education as a role is that there is varying opinions on who really is a Nurse Educator because of the diversity of roles and educational entries offered in the field.

Is a BSN-prepared Nurse Trainer who teaches skills to staff nurses at a hospital Med-Surg Unit the same as a Professor in an academic setting? They both teach but they certainly arrived at their positions with very different educational qualifications.

I think the DNP has a potential to become a terminal degree for those interested in teaching as a nursing career. At the current time, the PhD in Nursing is still held as the pinnacle of academic advancement in nursing as evidenced by the fact that many tenured university-level positions still regard a PhD as a minimum qualification.

However, the PhD as a degree does not typically train academics. The curriculum emphasizes nursing scholarship in terms of building the knowledge base of nursing as a science through research and interdisciplinary collaboration. It doesn't emphasize curriculum development or evaluation and testing which would be pertinent to teaching at any level.

I think that in time, schools will accept the DNP as a respectable terminal degree for Nurse Educators as more schools with respectable reputations offer it. The DNP as I see it still suffer from an "unspoken snobbery" by some camps in nursing academia and the fact that for-profit institutions such as American Sentinel have latched on to take advantage of its potentials have not helped the cause.

[elkpark]

Plenty of nursing schools (in colleges and universities) already only hire doctorally-prepared faculty (whether DNPs, PhDs, or any of the other nursing doctorates). However, some schools will not consider DNP-prepared people for tenure-track positions and are treating it as more of a "glorified MSN." That may change over time. I am not a fan of the DNP in general, so far.

[BCRNA]

The DNP does not teach education either. There are nursing education degrees and certificates. But neither the DNP or Phd includes courses on teaching. Some universities view the DNP as a subset of skills learned in the Phd, they call it Phd-lite. The Phd will still be the preferred degree in academic settings because if the research focus. The DNP is a great degree for people wanting a clinical focus, and some schools give tenure to them. Hopefully the DNP will improve faculty salaries for instructors.