Student career goal changes during doctoral education in nursing

As a relatively new doctoral discipline, nursing appears to be following the research focus of other disciplines in its doctoral programs. One original intent of awarding doctoral degrees in nursing was to prepare faculty. This study sought to determine how many doctoral students in nursing identified the goal of a career as faculty in schools of nursing at the beginning of their doctoral program, and how many would choose faculty positions after being enrolled in a doctoral program for more than one year. The population included 785 doctoral students in nursing from 35 schools in the United States. A cross-sectional study design was used to compare newly enrolled doctoral students with students who had been enrolled for more than one year. Although first-year and more experienced students have similar career goals upon entering a doctoral program, the career goals of doctoral nursing students do change over time. More experienced students become less interested in faculty positions, especially in nondoctoral schools of nursing, and more interested in positions involving research and consultation. Within specific programs, students in EdD programs became more interested in faculty positions in doctoral universities. Students in DNS programs who changed their goals became more career goal oriented, thus compounding the shortage of doctoral faculty. These changes in career goals warrant examination.     

Evaluation of doctoral nursing programs by doctoral students in Japan: Cross‐sectional questionnaire survey

Aim: The purpose of this study was to examine the current state and issues of doctoral nursing programs from the perspective of recipients of the educational process. Methods: All 46 doctoral nursing programs in Japan in 2008 were asked to participate in this study and 28 programs agreed to participate. The questionnaire had 3 sections that evaluated the quality of doctoral education, which are 17 items on the program features, 12 items on the quality of faculty, and 9 items on resources. Results: The questionnaire was distributed to 304 graduate students and 127 students returned by mail. Most of the students agreed that the program goal and curriculum were consistent with the philosophy and mission of the university. The quality of the faculty and of the resources, such as library and computing facilities, were highly rated, while faculty mentorship and support staff for student research were viewed as areas for improvement. Only 30% of the students reported that a periodic assessment of the doctoral program was available in the university, and even when such an assessment did exist, students and graduates were not often involved in the program evaluation. Conclusions: To improve the quality of doctoral nursing education in Japan, there is an urgent need for faculty development and the provision of research support services for faculty and students including more technical and support staff. Furthermore, it is imperative to conduct periodic evaluation of doctoral nursing programs in Japan.     

Creating a successful environment for preparing doctoral-level nurse educators

The ongoing nursing shortage requires that universities be creative in developing alternative methods to enhance the supply of nursing faculty. We report on an innovative collaborative program between colleges of nursing and education to prepare future nursing faculty. The evaluation of this initiative was accomplished using comparative data from doctoral students in other non-nursing programs. We found that the nurse educator program was positive in influencing students' knowledge and skill development and perceptions of faculty support, compared with other non-nursing doctoral programs.     

Evaluation of doctoral nursing education in Japan by students, graduates, and faculty: a comparative study based on a cross-sectional questionnaire survey

Evaluation of doctoral education in nursing is needed with the rapid increase in doctoral nursing programs in Japan. This study aimed to compare the evaluations of doctoral nursing education by students, graduates, and faculty. All 46 doctoral nursing programs in Japan were target settings. 127 students who had been in the doctoral program, 24 graduates and 87 faculty members had responded to the survey. A questionnaire with 17 items for program evaluation, 12 items for faculty evaluation, 9 items for resource evaluation, and 3 for overall evaluations was distributed in November and December 2008. Responses to 1 program evaluation item, 2 faculty evaluation items and 4 resource evaluation items indicated significant differences among evaluators. While 79.2% of graduates responded positively that the number of faculty members was sufficient to facilitate learning, only 36.1% of faculty members and 49.6% of students responded affirmatively. Graduates' ratings were the most positive and faculty members were the least positive, especially for infrastructure or equipment such as libraries, computers, and the number of technical and support staff. The significant differences among the evaluators suggested that having evaluators in various roles is important to evaluate the quality of doctoral nursing education.     

Faculty As Doctoral Students: Policies of Doctoral Programs in Nursing

The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze existent policies of doctoral programs in nursing with respect to the dual assumption of the student and faculty member roles. A 7-item instrument was developed to ascertain policies used by doctoral programs in nursing. All of the 22 programs surveyed responded. The majority of schools had doctoral students in nursing who were also on the faculty in their own program. Equal proportions of the sample (40.9%) either prohibited enrollment of faculty members in the doctoral programs at their schools or permitted enrollment with restrictions in at least one of the following areas: number of dual faculty/ students, rank, credit hours, and limitations to undergraduate teaching only. Each of the four schools having no regulation on the dual role were in private universities and had less than 9% of their faculty enrolled in their doctoral programs. Stringent policies were more likely to be found in public institutions and to have emanated from university regulations. The results indicated that the issue of dual role had achieved policy agenda status in schools of nursing with doctoral programs and that the concern is of such magnitude that it has resulted in policy formulation university-wide. A variety of enrollment policies appear to have been accepted and valued.     

Selecting US research-intensive doctoral programs in nursing: Pragmatic questions for potential applicants

Nurses hoping to enter a research intensive doctoral program have a choice of program delivery modes, faculty expertise, and multiple points of entry in addition to the traditional post masters. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) lists doctoral programs in nursing in over 300 universities in the United States (U.S.) and Puerto Rico, with most institutions offering more than one type of doctorate. For prospective students who want to maximize their likelihood of significant, sustained scientific impact, identifying research-intensive Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programs with faculty who have a topic match is key. Embarking on a scientific career requires assessing the curricula and faculty at several institutions. The purpose of this paper is to give prospective students pragmatic guidance in selecting a U.S. research-intensive doctoral program in nursing. We provide a list of published quality indicators in PhD programs as well as potential questions to be addressed to key persons in schools.     

Strategic enhancement of nursing students information literacy skills: interdisciplinary perspectives.

Nursing students are required to keep abreast of evolving new health care information. It is important for nursing students to develop the skills and knowledge to access nursing and medical databases for their professional growth and development to perform evidence-based practice. A collaborative approach between faculty and librarians is one way to ensure the success of students in acquiring the skills on how to access and use new health care information. The collaborators of this paper discuss strategies of how to conduct database searches for research articles. This paper is written in collaboration with faculty, librarians, and a doctoral student who have experience teaching nursing students at a historically black college and/or university, or at minority serving institutions.     

Selecting doctoral programs in nursing: resources for students and faculty.

Sixty-nine doctoral programs in nursing are currently offered at 75 universities in the United States. Resources to assist prospective doctoral students in making decisions concerning successfully pursuing doctoral education are collected and organized by a variety of nursing organizations. Nurses in academic settings access these lists and specialty publications through their deans' offices and professional affiliations. Prospective students, on the other hand, are largely employed in clinical settings and are often unaware of the existence of this information, which could assist them in their decisions. The purpose of this article is to provide prospective doctoral students and the faculty that may advise them with a current information to use in selecting a doctoral program in nursing.     

Changing the face of nursing faculty: minority faculty recruitment and retention.

Critical shortages in the nursing workforce pose life-and-death decisions for health care institutions. Similar shortages of nursing faculty, particularly nursing faculty with doctoral degrees, confront schools of nursing. Competition among health care institutions and schools of nursing for master's- and doctorally prepared nurses is fierce. Credentialed minority faculty are in even greater demand. Rising salaries and increasing opportunities outside of academia present significant barriers to schools of nursing seeking to recruit and retain minority nursing faculty. Challenges to increasing the number of minority nursing faculty surface very early in the pipeline and include competition among health professions and other disciplines for minority students. Successful long-term strategies to increase the number of minority nursing faculty must include strategies to attract higher numbers of minority students into baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral nursing programs. Several initiatives to increase minority student enrollment in the health professions are highlighted. Finally, strategies for recruiting, empowering, and retaining minority nursing faculty by schools of nursing are presented.     

Quality of faculty, students, curriculum and resources for nursing doctoral education in Korea: A focus group study

Background

The rapidly increasing number of nursing doctoral programs has caused concern about the quality of nursing doctoral education, including in Korea.

Objectives

To describe the perceived quality of Korean nursing doctoral education in faculty, student, curriculum and resources.

Design

Focus group.

Settings

Fourteen Korean nursing doctoral programs that are research focused and include coursework.

Participants

Four groups of deans, faculty, students and graduates; students completed three semesters of doctoral program; and graduates completed doctoral programs within the most recent 3 years.

Methods

Focus groups examined the strengths and weaknesses of faculty, students, curriculum, and resources.

Results

Faculty strengths were universities’ recognition of faculty research/scholarship and the ability of faculty to attract extramural funding. Faculty weaknesses were aging faculty; high faculty workload; insufficient number of faculty; and teaching without expertise in nursing theories. Student strengths were diverse student backgrounds; multidisciplinary dissertation committee members, and opportunities to socialize with peers and graduates/faculty. Students’ weaknesses were overproduction of PhDs with low academic quality; a lower number and quality of doctoral applicants; and lack of full-time students. Curriculum strengths were focusing on specific research areas; emphasis on research ethics; and multidisciplinary courses. Curriculum weaknesses were insufficient time for curriculum development; inadequate courses for core research competencies; and a lack of linkage between theory and practice. Resources strengths were inter-institutional courses with credit transfer. Weaknesses were diminished university financial support for graduate students and limited access to school facilities. Variations in participant groups (providers [deans and faculty] vs. receivers [students and graduates]) and geographical location (capital city vs. regional) were noted on all the four components.

Conclusions

The quality characteristics of faculty, students, curriculum, and resources identified in this first systematic evaluation of the quality of nursing doctoral education can inform nursing schools, universities, and policy-makers about areas for improvement in Korea and possibly in the world. Geographical variations found in these four components of doctoral education warrant attention by policy-makers in Korea.     

An education in racism

Lack of diversity in nursing doctoral programs compromises the quality of doctoral education and perpetuates the shortage of faculty of color in nursing schools. To help understand the contexts that contribute to this lack of diversity, this study examined the experiences of 9 women of color in nursing doctoral programs. The aim of the study was to describe the experiences, challenges, and understandings of women of color in nursing doctoral programs. Analysis of interview data revealed that racism was a pervasive and harmful influence on participants and that this influence was largely invisible to Euro-American faculty and students. These findings highlight the need for faculty and students to critically reflect on their own racism as an important first step in challenging the status quo of racism in nursing education. "When I dare to be powerful--to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." - Audre Lorde (cited in Humbolt State University, n.d.).     

A prebaccalaureate PhD option: shaping the future of research-focused doctoral education

The future of PhD education in nursing is at a crossroads. Our current practice of primarily enrolling post-master's students with years of clinical experience is not producing an adequate number of graduates who are able to make significant and sustained contributions to nursing research. Therefore, it is timely to consider educational innovations that encourage a different population of students to consider doctoral research training. A prebaccalaureate or early-entry option to the PhD in nursing is a means toward this end. At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a select group of prenursing students and students beginning the nursing major are offered an early admission to PhD education. A key component of the Early Entry PhD Option is immediate and intensive research training with an established nurse faculty researcher. In this article, the authors describe the curriculum of a prebaccalaureate, research-focused doctoral option and its early results.     

Current strengths and limitations of doctoral education in nursing: are we prepared for the future?

The number of doctoral programs in nursing has increased significantly over the past 20 years. This growth has been driven in part by the pressing need to supply faculty to teach in undergraduate and graduate programs in nursing. Yet, enrollment in and graduation from these programs has remained fairly constant even as the number of programs has grown. During this 20-year period, there have been numerous conferences, workshops, and meetings devoted to the topic of doctoral education with a constant thread running through them calling for the need to maintain quality--quality students, quality faculty, quality research, and quality course work and requirements--in them. Faculty teaching in these programs have given considerable thought to ways of assuring quality in the program of study so as to ensure the graduate's ability to function as a teacher and researcher. Yet, despite these efforts, still less than 50 per cent of nursing faculty possess the doctorate, faculty are experiencing difficulty in fulfilling the tripartite mission of colleges and universities, and extramural funding for research is very unevenly distributed across programs and, in total, is inadequate to build the science. This article examines the strengths and weaknesses of doctoral programs in nursing at the start of the new millennium in which the challenges in higher education are forecasted to become more focused and intense, using accepted benchmarks of quality for students, faculty, and curricula.     

Educating Nursing Scientists: Integrating Genetics and Genomics into PhD Curricula

Nursing science is a diverse field of study, the scope of which has broadened to more fully incorporate genetics and genomics. In recent years, these topics have become focus areas for many nursing researchers. However, recent evidence suggests that doctoral level nursing students and nursing faculty may be underprepared to conduct independent research using genomic approaches. Furthermore, genetics and genomics are severely underrepresented in doctoral level nursing curricula across the United States. This article suggests a thorough, yet manageable three-part curriculum designed to educate doctoral level nursing students on genetics, genomics, and their use in nursing science. Recommendations are then given for the integration of the curriculum into existing nursing PhD programs.     

Opening a doctoral program in nursing: factors to consider

As nursing education has evolved from hospital-based training schools to the college campus, the need for doctoral nursing faculty and other leaders has increased. The greatest needs are for nurses capable of conducting research in nursing and for faculty to teach in baccalaureate and master's nursing programs. Therefore, schools of nursing across the country are considering initiation of new doctoral programs. This decision is a complex one that depends on numerous factors related mostly to resources. Ideally, new programs will develop only after the necessary resources have been identified and secured. Another critical decision is the type of doctoral program a school chooses to offer. Nursing should make an attempt to determine whether there actually are substantial differences between the present professional and research degree programs. In addition, the roles that doctorally prepared nurses will be expected to fulfill in the health care system should be defined. Overall, in spite of the documented need for many more doctorally prepared nurses and the inability of existing doctoral nursing programs to meet that need, new programs should be initiated with utmost caution. Thorough, extensive data gathering should provide information about available alternatives. The positive and negative consequences of each alternative should be identified and carefully weighed. Finally, once a school has decided to initiate a program, it should plan carefully for implementation. Thorough preparation will assure that the program selected is well matched to the resources available to support it.     

Healthy nursing doctoral programs: relationship between perceptions of the academic environment and productivity of faculty and alumni

Indicators of the environment of doctoral programs in nursing were examined in relationship to productivity. Student and faculty perceptions of the academic program environment were correlated with outcome measures of productivity for both faculty and alumni. Twenty-five of the 29 eligible doctoral programs in nursing participated in the study; results are based on the responses of 326 faculty, 659 students, and 296 alumni. Environmental and productivity indicators were primarily measured by the Graduate Program Self-Assessment (GPSA) instruments developed by Educational Testing Service (ETS) for studying dimensions of quality in doctoral education. Significant relationships were found between faculty perceptions of the environment's scholarly excellence, available resources, and student commitment and motivation and faculty productivity. Students consistently viewed the environment more positively when greater percentages of the faculty were at the associate, rather than the assistant, professor level. There was minimal relationship between faculty and student perceptions of the environment and alumni productivity.     

A group think tank as a discourse coalition to promote minority nursing faculty retention

BackgroundThe nursing profession will need one million more nurses by 2024, yet nursing schools are turning away applicants due to insufficient numbers of nursing faculty. Likewise, minority nursing faculty are needed in order to attract diverse nursing students who can then address health care disparities.PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe the use of a group think tank (GTT) as a mentoring strategy for supporting the recruitment and retention of minority nursing faculty.MethodGuided by Kotter's theory of change, this paper describes the application of the GTT approach with 5 African American (AA) faculty, one AA doctoral student and a cross-cultural mentor.FindingsResults are presented based upon the metrics typically used to support career advancement, promotion and/or tenure.DiscussionThe GTT is a promising mentoring model that can be used to integrate cross-cultural and peer mentoring into academic communities to support diversity in academia.     

What's your specialty, Doc? Perioperative nursing

Perioperative nurses who are contemplating the pursuit of a doctoral degree in nursing need information about the current status and characteristics of doctoral education to make informed decisions. This article addresses questions both philosophic and pragmatic that should be addressed by prospective students. Information sources are identified for assistance with making the selection from the 75 plus programs that offer a nursing doctorate nationwide. Suggested sources include professional organizations as well as current students, faculty, and alumni. Determinations should be based on academic information, such as similarities and differences in degrees awarded; the program of studies leading to the degree; admission and progression standards; research interest of the student relative to identified focus and expertise of program faculty, dissertation process, and university and nursing education resources and services, including financial and technological support. Attainment of the doctorate is presented as an enriching experience that prepares nurses for leadership in both education and health care as clinicians, educators, and administrators. Particular attention should be paid to selecting programs that compare favorably with the published American Association of Colleges of Nursing quality indicators for doctoral programs. There must be strong support in the program from both faculty mentors and peer colleagues, reflective of a community of scholars, pursuing not only individual but also collective wisdom, whereas engaging an individual's mind and soul in the pursuit of new knowledge and skills in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect.     

What are our priorities? Addressing the looming shortage of nursing faculty

Let's get our priorities straight. As we continue the essential educational upgrading of the profession through research-focused doctoral programs, and through the new CNL and DNP programs, let's be sure that at least some of these programs attend to the critical need for well-prepared nursing faculty (i.e., provide opportunities for and encourage students to take advanced coursework in nursing education). Let's also pay attention to the reality of limited capacity in our research-focused doctoral programs and look to other viable approaches to having a cadre of well-prepared faculty. For example, let's recognize, value, and reward the important role master's-prepared nurses, especially those with advanced coursework in nursing education, can and must play in our basic programs. And let's be sure that we have faculty in our ranks who have the training, aptitude, and credentials to conduct the research so critical to progress in nursing education.     

Opportunities in preparing global leaders in nursing.

During the past decade, there has been a large increase in the number of international nurses pursuing doctoral education in the United States. The influx of these nurses has ramifications for the institutional systems providing education as well as on international and American nursing students. To begin understanding the issues presented by international doctoral nursing education, a survey of U.S. schools of nursing as well as a focus group of currently enrolled international doctoral students was conducted. The survey revealed that both international students and nursing programs experience challenges with regard to language, communication, financing, and support systems. More specifically, information gathered from the focus group identified issues regarding (1) lack of familiarity with the U.S. health care system, (2) lack of previous experience with the seminar format used in doctoral programs, (3) restricted opportunities to participate in faculty research, and (4) stress from a heavy course load to finish the program within a very short time period. Universally, the surveys and focus group lauded the positive global perspective imbued on all students and faculties via the international connection. Nonetheless, schools of nursing need to identify more effective strategies to aid international students in their development as successful global leaders. Meleis's framework for culturally competent scholarship is offered as a guide for schools of nursing.