Integrating emerging areas of nursing science into PhD programs

Emerging areas of nursing science and PhD education for the 21st century: Response to commentaries

“…The Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science Idea Festival for Nursing Science Education was grounded in the recognition that nursing science is the science of health, and the emerging areassome of which are biology based and reliant on highly technical methods-constitute a calculated projection about future directions for nursing science (Henly et al, 2015b). One reviewer said that "these foci redirect the traditional nursing doctoral program curricula in a manner reflective of the biological underpinnings of human disease and behavior."…”

“…Research-focused programs in nursing that provide specialization in nursing history, genomics for nursing science, and the science of nursing education are now available, and more programs are moving in these directions. As reflected in the National Research Council classification of nursing as a biological and health science (Ostriker et al, 2011), we think that science-focused PhD programs will continue as the most common "type" of program, and our recommendation is that programs clarify and announce the area(s) of scientific specialization available to PhD students (Henly et al, 2015b). The recommendation does not preclude development of other types or content emphases of PhD programs (Fairman & Villarruel, 2015), and we look forward to continued discussion of this possibility.…”

“…Likewise, we are grateful to the anonymous peer reviewers who questioned us about some critical issues that we will address here. Our articles (Henly et al, 2015a andHenly et al, 2015b) and the commentaries focused on challenges involved in integrating advances in omics including the microbiome; behavior, behavior change, and biobehavioral science; escience, informatics, and big data; quantitative sciences; translational science; patient-reported outcomes; and health economics into nursing PhD programs.…”

“…None of these eventualities were imaginable at the time quality standards, and curricula were proposed and adopted for nursing PhD programs (Jamann, 1985). The current NINR (2011) strategic plan acknowledged the impact of technology on nursing science; Grady (2015) reiterated that innovation and technology constitute cross-cutting areas vital to the advancement of nursing science and health care; the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN, 2010) position statement on the research doctorate included data, information, and knowledge management, processing, and analysis as key curricular elements; and we included advances in quantitative sciences including data mining methods as an emerging area with substantial relevance to nursing science (Henly et al, 2015b) and nursing science education (Henly et al, 2015a).…”

“…We presented the scientific context for the Idea Festival Advisory Committee (IFAC) recommendations for integrating emerging areas into PhD programs from this perspective (Henly et al, 2015b), and a reviewer was critical, saying that substantive knowledge was conflated with design and methods. However, IFAC contends that methods of data collection and analysis enabled by technology generate novel questions from which new, sometimes unanticipated, insights accrue.…”