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. Abstract BackgroundThe global shortage of nursing professionals educated at baccalaureate level and beyond has been highlighted. Within America, services are preparing to treat an additional 32 million individuals under the new Health Reform Bill. Within South Africa the existing nursing education outputs do not meet service demands. Many countries are addressing these shortages by developing advanced nursing roles which require research degrees. Objective:To evaluate a national nursing PhD development programme within the context of a nurse education strategy and a national health insurance plan. Design:A comparative effectiveness research design was employed. Setting:The setting was South Africa between 2011 and 2013, a county with 51.7 million inhabitants, 18 universities, with eight offering nursing degrees and 12 public nursing colleges offering diplomas. 2Participants included PhD candidates, programme facilitators, supervisors and key stakeholders. Methods:Data from a day long workshop was analysed using an inductive thematic analysis. Three years of evaluation reports were analysed. A mapping of the alignment of the PhD topics with priorities was conducted. A comparison of the development of nurse education of the national and international funder and an interpretation of the findings within the context of the programmes curriculum, the national nurse education strategy and the National Health Insurance plan was conducted. ResultsThe evaluation rated the programme highly. Three themes were identified from the workshop. These were, -support‖ with the sub-themes of burden, leveraging and a physical supportive place; -planning‖ with the sub-themes of the national context and practice, and -quality‖ with the sub-themes of processes as well as monitoring and evaluation. The mapping of PhD topics revealed that research was in line with development priorities.However, in order to match the underpinning values (sustainability, partnership and effectiveness) of the funders, further investment and infrastructural changes were found to be necessary to sustain the programme and its impact To address sustainability and capacity in nations scaling up nurse education and healthcare insurance it was recommended that top-up degrees for diploma educated nurses be developed along with the implementation of a national nursing strategy for PhD and post-doctoral research encompassing practice implementation and collaboration. IntroductionA global shortage of nursing professionals educated at baccalaureate level and beyond exists and the impact of this shortage is apparent on each continent. Nickitas and Feeg (2011) found that less than 1% of nurses have a doctoral degree and that forecasters predict substantial shortfalls in future nurse academics and as a consequence future nurse practitioners.Many countries are addressing these shortages in healthcare provision by ensuring that the basic nursing education qualification is at degree level and by developing advanced nursing roles which have a wider remit and which require ...

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