Reply To: Career Goals

[Anonymous]

I had not initially thought about looking into pursuing anything in academia with my DNP after I finish. I was solely going into my program with a one-track mind only thinking about practice, but I have been pleasantly surprised to have been introduced to multiple scholarly articles that really elaborated on the different career paths, including one in the academic world, of a DNP graduate and it opened my eyes to how versatile the degree really is. I agree with your statement that it could help fill the gap in the faculty shortage, there will always be a need for well-trained, educated, and experienced faculty for DNP programs and I believe that the way towards that is to change the nature of the conversation regarding what a DNP graduate can do or be. By looking at the DNP as more than just a solely clinical practice-facing degree, we can potentially gain a lot more interest in those who are in the nursing world and want to make the jump to advanced practice, but they may not want to work the clinics or acute care facilities in practice, and may not want the research heavy PhD.