Nursing Leadership Journey to the Doctor of Nursing Degree

Leadership Journey
Name
Institution
Leadership Journey
Introduction
The nursing profession has a wide range of terminal degrees but the Doctor of Nursing Profession is the latest. The other doctoral degrees in this profession are the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Doctor of Education (EdD), Doctor of Nursing Science (DNS), and Doctor of Science in Nursing (DSN). The Doctor of Nursing is termed is widely seen as practice-focused and is geared towards preparing students to work as professionals in nursing practice. In the United States there are nearly 100 DNP programs with many others in the development process (Christman, 2010).
My journey into the Doctor of Nursing program goes back to many years ago. As a young person, I always wanted to become a career nurse. However, this did not play out as expected, something that saw me pursue a master’s degree in a different field. However after graduation, I had a strong urge to go back and pursue a doctoral degree. Like any typical American, however, life’s responsibilities and work always came in the way of my endeavor. Although there were numerous areas that I could choose to pursue my doctorate degree, nursing was my first choice. However, this was not automatic as a large section of the universities that I searched did not have the DNP program. For a while, it seemed like I would settle for a doctorate degree in education or research but this was not exactly what I wanted to do. At some point in my search journey, I was offered a chance to study PhD in nursing. After consulting widely on what this particular degree entailed, I realized that this was not exactly what I wanted to do or to become and this meant that my search journey was still on. For some time, I toyed with the idea of pursuing a doctorate in organizational development since I have always considered myself to have excellent leadership skills. This saw me search for various online programs in the hope that I would find one that suited not only my preference but schedule as well. Although there were numerous programs whose curricula fascinated me, none of them was compelling enough to convince me to join. Since a young age, I have always considered myself as someone who fits well in a group setting and for my doctoral program I needed social network of contemporaries that I could learn and share with in a classroom setting and as expected, the online programs did not offer this feature. On top of this, I kept going back to my passion, which was nursing practice, nursing leadership, and nursing administration. This kept me wondering whether there was a degree that exactly fitted the description of what I wanted.
One Sunday evening while attending a meeting for healthcare professional meant to discuss the proposed health care bill on Obamacare, I met a group of professionals who were having an interesting discussion about the newly launched DNP program at the Duke School of Nursing. These professionals described the DNP as a terminal degree with an indirect pathway for nurse executives and a direct path for nurse practitioners. This seemed to be the spark that I had been desperately searching for all those years. After the meeting, I searched online for universities within my area that offered the DNP program and as I had anticipated, I found several that I could attend. Within six months after hearing about the DNP, I had applied and been accepted in the program and this marked the official start of my journey.
The DNP degree has undergone an evolution over the years. There is a wide difference between a PhD and a DNP and DNP students are usually asked why they chose the program over the well-known PhD. The difference between these two programs is the fact that the DNP degree is practice focused while the PhD is research focused. For a long time, the PhD was the only terminal degree that one could find in nursing. However, this changed in 2004 when the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) committee agreed to the Position statement on the Practice Doctorate in Nursing (AACN, 2004). The main idea behind this shift towards the direction of clinical doctoral education was to deal with the educational program progression and the practice-level needs for the registered nurses whose practice was at an advanced stage. This new program was also designed to react to the 2001 report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) titled “To Err is Human.” This report is often quoted in critiques of literature since it placed attention on the safety of patients as well as errors occurring in the hospitals. The IOM indicated that there was close to 100,000 deaths that occurred annually due to medical errors. It stressed that there was need for extra systems and skills and that it was necessary for health professionals to get extra learning to develop these proficiencies. Leadership and patient-centered care were critical components in reducing medical errors. The DNP program is one of the tools that are meant to enhance learning around these issues and to grow leaders who are nurtured at the doctoral level to aid implement programs in health systems as they introduce evidence into practice. Majority of the individuals who select the DNP over the PhD degree do so since their main interest is in promoting quality in clinical practice instead of merely coming up with new knowledge (Carter, 2013).
According to AACN (2004), nursing practice is defined as any typ...