Scholarship and research are the hallmarks of doctoral education. In nursing education, an expanded perspective of scholarship has emerged that involves the translation of research into practice and the dissemination and integration of new knowledge, which the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) states are key activities of DNP graduates.
“Research-focused doctoral programs in nursing are designed to prepare graduates with the research skills necessary for discovering new knowledge in the discipline,” said DNP director and assistant dean for graduate programs, Dr. Susan Hibben. “In contrast, DNP graduates provide leadership for evidence-based practice. This requires competence in knowledge application activities: the translation of research into practice, the evaluation of practice, improvement of the reliability of health care practice and outcomes, and participation in collaborative research.”
As one of the building skills for the DNP project, students collaborate in the process of a Systematic Review. In this process, the graduate nursing student incorporates education and research into a practice that is reflective of the dynamic needs of a diverse population.
One project by DNP candidate Sharon Reams Henry, titled “Building a Stronger Workforce for Nurses That Work in Post-acute Care, Focusing on Structural Empowerment and Reducing Nurse Turnover,” shed light on the shortage of nurses in post-acute care and how it is just one of many significant problems that challenge and impact health care. It often seen as the last level of care, according to Henry.
“This nursing shortage indirectly contributes to increasing demands and workload among other team members, which in turn tends to affect associate engagement, morale, and retention of those employees. As the workload increase among nurses in home health, this also impacts vacancy and turnover and puts a tremendous strain on nursing administrators and other health care leaders to find innovative ways to attract more nurses to post-acute care,” she explained.
Henry’s research supported the fact that it remains critically necessary for home healthcare providers to attract, recruit, and retain nursing staff to reduce overhead, often resulting in increased organization costs.
Said Henry, “I have worked in-home care for over 25 years and have seen nurses in-home care struggle and leave due to burnout from the stress of keeping up with the documentation and constant change due to new regulatory guidance from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This project will aim to build a more robust workforce in post-acute care for nurses by promoting structural empowerment, work-life balance, and a mentorship/mentee program. Professionally, it allowed me to generate a translation of evidence to a workforce such as post-acute care that is limited by gaining in-depth knowledge from research with the development of effective evidence-based interventions and the implementation of a quality improvement recommendations, that could help to build a stronger workforce that is sustainable and one that would support and reduce nursing turnover in post-acute care.”
Through this advanced leadership role, the DNP graduate becomes instrumental in ensuring health promotion, health maintenance and health restoration for society. Through scientific inquiry and collaborative relationships, the DNP-prepared advanced practice nurse continually augments and refines the science of nursing.
In LCON’s graduate programs, students perform a critical literature review in their Research and Biostatics course and continue to develop this clinical topic in their evidence-based practice course as a project proposal. For FNP students, by the time they are in their final clinical residency course, they have transformed this from paper, to a proposal slide set, to a conference-ready poster. Typically, posters are presented on campus, but because of COVID, and with assistance from full-time and adjunct faculty, students presented this spring and summer via Zoom, using breakout rooms “and patience,” added Hibben. This allowed for scholarly dialogue for each project with students and faculty.