Abstract
In a recent meeting with international nurse scholars, the discussion centered around the question: Who is responsible for knowledge building in nursing? It was agreed that knowledge building is and has been relegated to the creators of what has become known as nursing science. In many well-known sources, for example, Barrett (2002, 2017) and Barrett and colleagues (1997), it was agreed that nursing science encompasses the discipline-specific knowledge that resides in the extant nursing theories. The creators of these theories along with their colleagues are the developers and testers of nursing theories. They are those scholars who set forth ideas about human beings, the universe, and health over the last several decades. These early knowledge builders of nursing science laid a strong foundation to promote and solidify the uniqueness of the discipline of nursing, inviting the emerging generations of scholars to build upon this foundation.
The new generation of knowledge builders are those who seek and join PhD programs in nursing that have as a goal continuing nursing theory development through creative conceptualization and formal quantitative and qualitative research. In order to build upon the foundation of nursing science the faculty in academic programs that offer PhDs in nursing have a responsibility to offer courses steeped in nursing science with many diverse avenues to build knowledge instead of following recent trends in PhD nurse education offering programs steeped in new technologies and biomedical content, such as omics, symptom science, precision medicine, artificial intelligence mechanisms and others that arise from other disciplines. These technologies and those of global health diversification, the sciences, advanced statistics, and translational engagements with other disciplines should be set forth in the nursing science curriculum as tangential to the core, and they should play only a minor role in the education of PhD nursing students.
The persons at the international meeting who were intensely engaged in the discussion asked, what might a PhD curriculum look like that is focused on nursing science? A few ideas were offered—surely the entire program would espouse and clearly mark the program as one in nursing science. The core would begin with courses in philosophy of science and basic human science nursing as well as courses in which the history of nursing science development is chronicled. The extant nursing theoretical perspectives as the content of the discipline should be in the forefront of the program. There would also be courses in nursing science ethics as unfolding with the nursing theoretical perspectives rather than the current biomedical ethics currently being taught in PhD nursing programs. The major courses in research would focus on quantitative and qualitative methods as connected to the ontological, epistemological, and methodological modes of inquiry related to the theoretical bases of the discipline. The PhD in nursing dissertations would focus on creating new knowledge built on the extant nursing theories. Leading-following and teaching-learning models heralding basic science nursing would be prominent content in the curriculum. The goal of the PhD in nursing programs would not only focus on knowledge building with extant nursing theories but also preparing scholars to continue leading others in knowledge building and teaching-learning. All core courses would be undergirded with nursing science as described in the extant theories of the discipline.
The focus of a PhD in nursing science would be recognized as unique just as is the case in other human sciences, like psychology. There should be no confusion as to the nature of existence purported by the discipline of nursing. Those aspiring scholars being educated to be nursing science knowledge builders of the unique discipline of nursing should know and understand their task.
