Scientists and scholars
PhD program offers a new solution for a critical need
Written by Story by Chris Adam
Purdue’s School of Nursing and the College of Health and Human Sciences are educating the next generation of nursing scholars and scientists with the launch of a new doctor of philosophy in nursing degree. The program, which will admit its first students in 2017, is Purdue’s response to address the national call for more nurses prepared at the PhD level. Graduates of this program will possess the research knowledge and skills to collaborate with and lead transdisciplinary teams to address the grand challenges facing health care.
A critical need
The U.S. is facing a critical shortage of nursing scholars and scientists. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), U.S. nursing schools turned away 68,938 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2014 due to an insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors and budget constraints. Almost two-thirds of the nursing schools responding to the survey pointed to faculty shortages as a reason for not accepting all qualified applicants into baccalaureate programs. AACN also reported in 2014 that the average ages of nurse faculty with doctorates holding the ranks of professor, associate professor and assistant professor were 61.6, 57.6, and 51.4 years, respectively.
“There is a national goal to double the number of nurses with doctorates in the U.S. by 2020,” says Jane Kirkpatrick, associate professor and head of the School of Nursing. “These nurses are essential to educate the next generation of nursing faculty given the increasing demand for additional nurses in the state. With significant numbers of faculty retiring in the next 5-10 years, we must move swiftly to meet the need for education.”
According to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, the number of nursing jobs across Indiana is expected to grow 17.6 percent through 2022, putting nursing at the top of the “Hoosier Hot 50 Jobs” list.
A trend for major health care organizations to employ nursing scholars and scientists is adding to the pressure to graduate more nurses from PhD programs.
“These organizations are looking for highly educated nurses to leverage the enormous amounts of patient data being generated by our electronic health records via analytics in order to better understand the activities that contribute to improved patient outcomes and define best practices,” Kirkpatrick says. “For example, a nurse scientist may facilitate a data-driven implementation and follow-up with data analyses from clinical research studies designed to improve clinical procedures and protocols.”
Purdue joins Indiana University School of Nursing at IUPUI as one of only two nursing PhD programs in Indiana. Purdue’s program aims to prepare nurse scholars and scientists for two possible roles: as researchers and administrators for health care organizations, and as faculty members at nursing schools.
A comprehensive solution
Purdue’s new nursing PhD program includes a curriculum designed as a three-year plan of study for full-time, post-master’s degree students. The program focuses on research, leadership, collaboration and communication. Karen Foli, associate professor and director of the PhD program, says that the program will offer students face-to-face instruction and mentorship from expert nursing faculty, along with opportunities to experience transdisciplinary collaboration with faculty and students from multiple areas across the University, including the colleges of Health and Human Sciences, Engineering, Pharmacy and Veterinary Medicine.
“Purdue is a research-intensive university,” Kirkpatrick says. “We truly have a rich infrastructure in place to support PhD students in transdisciplinary research to improve our nation’s health care system, including the improvement of health care delivery processes and the financial impact on the nation’s economy.”
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Since the emphasis is on transdisciplinary research, students will be able to build a unique curriculum through elective coursework, Foli says.
“In addition to core nursing courses, the electives will expose them to the knowledge they’ll need to conduct informed research that is truly a collaboration between nursing and another discipline,” she says. “Our students will have a primary and secondary mentor, with the primary in nursing and the secondary in an outside field of interest. We recognize that health care is delivered in the context of collaboration; therefore, Purdue’s expertise in team science is incredibly relevant.”
A unique aspect of the Purdue program is its flexibility. Students will be able to tailor the program to their research interests, such as health promotion, gerontology, health care systems, and military family-related research.
Interested students can choose to complete a dual-titled PhD with the Center for Aging and the Life Course (CALC). CALC is a University-wide entity designed to strengthen interdisciplinary inquiry on aging. The focus of the center is optimizing functional independence and well-being in later life.
“This is an important area of study for PhD nursing students because global demographics are changing with increasing numbers of individuals who are 65 and older,” Kirkpatrick says. “Purdue’s rich faculty expertise in gerontology across many professions, including nursing, is addressing the experiences of aging and the implication this population shift will have on the nation and world.”
Students in the new PhD program may choose to collaborate with faculty in industrial engineering who understand the development of processes to increase efficiencies. Similar collaborations could include pharmacy faculty on medication delivery and veterinary medicine faculty on research related to serious diseases affecting animals and humans.
“Most people receive health care in community settings rather than at an academic health center,” Kirkpatrick says. “At Purdue, we have strong relationships with community hospitals and primary health care systems, as well as nurse-led primary health care clinics in adjacent rural counties. Our students have access to diverse opportunities that prepare them well to address the health care challenges faced by many Americans.”
Graduates will be prepared to competently and confidently lead others; conduct rigorous research to expand nursing and transdisciplinary science; and translate findings to the bedside. They are also uniquely prepared to identify problems in health care delivery systems, bringing theory, existing evidence and scientific methods together to develop innovative solutions to health care challenges.
The Purdue program was competitively selected for the Future of Nursing Scholars program, which will provide scholarships, mentoring and leadership development activities through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This program, in its fourth year, provides funding to a diverse cadre of nurses seeking the PhD who are committed to leadership careers in research and discovery.
“Purdue’s nursing faculty believe nurses with an advanced degree are able to combine their bedside experiences with a deep understanding of innovations in the field and new research to make an impact,” says Karen Yehle, associate professor and director of graduate programs for the School of Nursing. “Only 1 percent of the 3.6 million nurses in the U.S. hold a PhD. Not only do we need these doctorally prepared nurses to educate our next generation of nurses, we need the new knowledge they will generate. Our new Purdue PhDs will be highly sought after for positions in academic environments and within health care organizations, including roles as directors of nursing research and clinical services.”
Kirkpatrick says: “These graduates will improve and enrich health care at both the individual and population level.”
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