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Nursing School Aims for Ph.D.

School officials believe new doctorate program could send it into top tier

Change is coming to the School of Nursing. With a new dean and a successful new bachelor's degree program, school officials are now looking at one of its most important initiatives in decades: a new Ph.D. program.

School officials presented the proposal to the Academic Council Oct. 21 and said the new program could help boost the university's smallest school into the nation's elite. It's also recognition that nursing education, while still focusing on professional training, can play an important scholarly role in the study of human care.

"The idea of a doctoral program in nursing is still relatively new," said Elizabeth Clipp, professor of nursing and a co-chair of the proposal steering committee. "They first appeared in the 1970s, and started to flourish only in the 1980s. These programs have proven that nursing research generates new knowledge and empirical information that is valuable."

Currently there are 88 doctoral nursing programs in the country, Clipp said. "We want to get the school into the top tier of nursing programs," Clipp said. "We're small, but we are also the highest-ranked nursing school without a Ph.D. program."

If approved by the Academic Council and Board of Trustees, the Ph.D. program would start in 2005 with four to six students in a 54-credit, four-to-five-year program. The theme of the program would be "Trajectories of Chronic Illness and Care Systems."

In focusing on chronic illness, the program would address one of the critical health care issues facing the country, Clipp said.

"More than 100 million Americans currently live with chronic illness and this is rapidly increasing with the aging of the population," she said. "But it is the prolonged course of chronic illness -- long after medical treatments have been applied -- in which individuals often experience declines in function, extended suffering and decreased quality of life. These issues are of fundamental concern to the discipline and science of nursing."

The Ph.D. program would also help Duke address the growing shortage of Ph.D. nurse faculty nationwide. The gap between nursing faculty approaching retirement age and those entering the ranks has dramatically increased since 1993, Clipp said.

Other nursing faculty members noted that the proposal's focus on chronic illness will build on one of the school's strengths -- its ties with the rest of the university. Nursing faculty members already collaborate with scholars from the health management program at the Fuqua School of Business, as well as those studying aging and chronic illness in the departments of psychology and sociology and the Divinity School.

"We do not have a research program at the school that is not interdisciplinary," said Professor Ruth Anderson, who also co-chaired the steering committee. "We have spent years building bridges with other university programs."

The proposal was seconded by new nursing dean Catherine Gilliss, who arrived at Duke Oct. 1 from Yale University. Gilliss praised the faculty members and former dean Mary Champagne for bringing the proposal to fruition.

"I didn't do much work on this, but I'll be happy to take the credit for its results," she said with a laugh. "I'm excited about what this will mean for the school."