Ed.D. in Nursing Education

The Ed.D. in Nursing Education at Nova Southeastern University’s Fischler School of Education gives nursing professionals multiple vocational options. Career nurses with a doctor in education may enter the teaching field, but they may also find careers in health administration, clinical research, or advanced clinical practice. They may secure lucrative opportunities as consultants; they may become managers of nursing infrastructure at large hospitals; or they may become researchers, helping to formulate solutions to the larger questions of health-care policy at national and international levels.

 

To be sure, the utility and versatility of the degree is not in question, nor is its value underestimated. Salaries for most nurses possessing this advanced level of education begin at around $50,000 for faculty at the Assistant Professor level, and rise as high as $200,000 for nursing executives at the larger medical center complexes of universities and city hospitals.

 

All of the above may be incentive enough for those in the profession to pursue a doctoral degree in nursing education, yet here’s another: the country is in dire need. According to Wanted Analytics, in May of 2011, new job ads for registered nurses exceeded 121,000, an increase of 46% from the same period in 2010; in April of 2011, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that—in spite of the recent recession—the healthcare sector of the economy continued to grow, adding 37,000 jobs in March of 2011, many of which were for RNs; in October of 2010, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Institute of Medicine announced that—in order to keep pace with the health demands of an aging population—the number of nurses with baccalaureate degrees would need to rise by 80%, and the population of nurses with doctoral degrees would need to double.

 

No one disputes that the incipient nursing shortage is a looming health care crisis, though there is widespread disagreement on a viable solution. Certainly, increasing the numbers of nursing educators is an integral component to any approach, especially since a leading factor in the rejection of qualified applicants to nursing programs is insufficient university faculty. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing confirms: “U.S. nursing schools turned away 67,563 qualified applicants from baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs in 2010 due to an insufficient number of faculty, clinical sites, classroom space, clinical preceptors, and budget constraints.”

 

The Fischler School of Education’s Ed.D. in Nursing Education offsets some of this deficiency.

Like all of Fischler’s programs, the Ed.D. in Nursing Education offers a flexible and versatile path to obtaining a doctoral degree. The 18 hours of coursework for the concentration in Nursing Education can be taken online or in a blended format —“online courses allow students to interact in a virtual classroom, while blended programs combine on-site and online instruction ... on-site courses are offered periodically over weekends and supplemented with online study.”

 

This kind of flexibility has broad appeal for nursing professionals who desire to enhance their education - whether they intend to explore new avenues in research, consultancy, or teaching, or whether they simply wish to expand their clinical repertoire as they continue to work as an R.N.

 

Irrespective of the career objectives of prospective applicants, the Doctor of Education in Nursing at the Fischler School will provide students with an enhanced skill set in a crucial profession whose ranks are diminishing just when their services are needed most. By increasing the numbers of qualified faculty to instruct the next generation of Registered Nurses, the Ed.D. in Nursing Education at the Fischler School helps to solve this growing crisis.