The University of Miami School of Nursing and Health Studies announces a new Doctorate in Nursing Practice (DNP) program to begin in January 2009. The program will prepare expert nurse practitioners to design, administer, and evaluate practice interventions and health care systems with a special focus on reducing health care disparities. Equally important, the program will help to address the national nursing shortage by increasing the number of clinical experts qualified to teach at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

“The past decade has seen a growing interest in practice-focused doctoral pro-grams in nursing to complement the research-focused PhD,” says Dean Nena Pera-gallo, DrPH, RN, FAAN, in announcing the new program. “National trends are driving the demand for professionals in many fields to hold practice doctorates. Our program will educate advance-practice nurses who are capable of implementing the science developed by PhD-prepared nurses and teaching safe, clinically-current practice to the next generation of nursing students.”

“Nurses offer real solutions to the health care crisis,” says University of Miami President Donna E. Shalala, our nation’s longest-serving Secretary of Health and Human Services. “While others continue to debate how to solve today’s health care challenges, nurses are finding solutions, on a daily basis, to ensure access to quality care. In addition to meeting the needs of the profession, the University of Miami’s DNP pro-gram will prepare advance-practice nurses to create effective health care systems, facilitate better patient care, and improve patient outcomes.”

Educating more doctorally-prepared nurses is central to the school’s mission, for without increasing the number of clinical faculty, the University of Miami cannot do its part to address the critical nursing shortage. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2005) projects a shortage of 1 million nurses nationwide by the year 2010. The state of Florida alone faces an estimated shortage of 18,000 nurses by 2010 and over 60,000 by 2020, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. More than 32,000 qualified applicants to baccalaureate and graduate nursing programs were turned away nationwide last year due to insufficient faculty and resource constraints, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) (2007). This total included almost 3,000 students who could potentially have assumed clinical faculty roles.

“Building on the school’s strong tradition of community service, cultural competency, and evidence-based research, our DNP will offer three tracks: clinical, administration, and education,” notes JoAnn Trybulski, PhD, RN, the Associate Dean at the School of Nursing and Health Studies who will oversee the program. “The three-semester curriculum, developed in accordance with the guidelines of the AACN’s “Essentials of Doctoral Education for Advanced Nursing Practice,” will be offered in a flexible, executive-education format. Our clinical partners, including the University of Miami Hospital, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, Anne Bates Leach Eye Hospital, and Jackson Memorial Hospital, offer unique opportunities for highly specialized, cut-ting-edge clinical practical.”

As another unique feature, students will take selected courses with faculty at the University of Miami’s School of Business Administration and School of Education. “Our DNP program is truly interdisciplinary,” notes Trybulski. “Partnering with other schools at the University of Miami will provide our DNP graduates with a broad base of knowledge and a competitive edge.”