Courses

This seminar guides students in exploring topics related to nursing education leadership, development of advanced professional competencies, and their dissertation research. The online seminar will include presentations of ongoing and proposed research by students and faculty, the creation of a professional dossier, and preparation for the comprehensive exam. As students develop their dissertation proposal, they may use the doctoral seminar to test their emerging ideas and obtain feedback from peers and faculty. Students participate in this online seminar until they successfully complete their comprehensive exams (Years 1 and 2).

In this hybrid course, doctoral students will learn how various philosophic traditions inform nursing knowledge development, practice, and education. Nursing science, the disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledges that form the foundation of nursing, is examined. Emphasis is on the process of philosophic inquiry and the ability to analyze systematically and logically the contemporary issues facing health services, the nursing profession, and nursing education. Philosophic foundations are laid from which students develop as scholars in their contribution to the nursing profession

Doctoral students will learn how to conceptualize nursing research methodology, with an emphasis on the foundations of nursing inquiry, the assumptions and claims underpinning the research enterprise, the philosophy of evidence, and justifications of how research questions and approaches articulate with socially and clinically relevant problems requiring investigation.

Based on research methodologies, this course provides the critical foundations of advanced research approaches to formulate procedures for inquiry (research designs) and detailed research methods of data collection, analysis, and interpretation (research methods). The implications of research decisions will be differentiated. Students obtain the in-depth knowledge and skills required to independently conduct research with an emphasis on the new and emerging approaches of nursing research. Critical examination of theories employed in the nursing discipline, research questions, designs, the positionality of the researcher, rigour, and ethics will be discussed.

Doctoral students will learn how to affect health system and educational change through public policy and knowledge translation. The philosophical, theoretical foundations and multi-faceted strategies of public policy (including health policy and educational policy) and knowledge translation are examined during a residency at the world-class Laurentian Leadership Centre in Ottawa. The student will apply knowledge translation concepts to their dissertation research plans.

Doctoral students will learn how to provide leadership to nursing education, drawing on higher education and leadership theories to analyze the sociopolitical context of nursing education. Particular attention is given to understanding the trifold role of the nursing professoriate of teaching, research, and service; and the management of learning environments.

This seminar deals with theoretical and practical aspects of designing dissertation research through to the successful completion of the dissertation. Topics pertaining to access and recruitment of study participants, data collection, data analysis, and knowledge translation will be addressed. Doctoral students will engage with classmates and faculty on this online seminar once they have completed their comprehensive exams (Year 3 and 4).

Doctoral students will complete an internship (approximately 100 hours) in mentorship with an expert nurse scholar-educator, researcher, policy analyst or leader. In conjunction with a faculty mentor, students will design and complete a project that is individualized to their learning needs and builds the professional skills of a nurse academician.

Doctoral students will design independent research, with the supervision of a committee with relevant substantive and methodological expertise.