INTRODUCTION ■ 7text focuses on why doctorally educated clinicians and practitioners in particular
need to enhance their emphasis on reflective practice (Chapter 19), why DNP clini-
cal scholars ought to have more real educational experiences in global health, and
why a mandatory study- abroad program is one way to achieve this (Chapter 20).
The final chapters are designed to leave the DNP student with thoughts of the pre-
sent and future. Bloch (Chapter 22), with her some 35 years’ experience as a vet-
eran NP, has wise counsel and advice, particularly for MSN- prepared NPs who are
heading back to graduate school and perhaps wondering how their doctoral degree
might really improve their already fine- tuned practice. The text concludes with a
critique (perhaps more a reflection) on the AACN’s (2006) Essentials of Doctoral
Education for Advanced Nursing Practice 10 years after its publication (Chapter 24) and
some futuristic thoughts about the DNP degree by the text’s two primary authors
(Chapter 25). We end this text with some projections of how we see DNP roles and
the degree evolving in the future.
After each of these chapters, Reflective Responses are provided by leading aca-
demics, administrators, and practitioners, including graduates from different DNP
programs. These contributions by leading nursing scholars are one great innovation
of this text. Sometimes, these additional viewpoints complement and sometimes con-
tradict, but mostly add additional insight and perspective. The concluding Reflective
Responses are written by Dr. Suzanne Prevost, former president of Sigma Theta Tau
International and now professor and dean at the University of Alabama, Capstone
College of Nursing, and by Dr. Margaret C. Slota, director of the DNP program at
Georgetown University. In the end, we are certain that these reflective responses will
markedly enhance the discussion that will likely take place in the classroom or online
as these multiple positions are evaluated. Each chapter also has 10 critical thinking
questions, which we highly recommend as discussion points, paper topics, debates, or
even as weekly written assignments. We mostly hope they will be fodder for “tussling
in the doctoral classroom,” which is what late Dr. Susan K. Leddy (Dr. Dreher’s dis-
sertation chair and former dean at Widener University) said should occur in doctoral
study. She had little affinity for polite or convenient agreement. Having completed a
postdoctoral research fellowship late in her career, Dr. Leddy told us that she did not
feel that conformist thinking advanced science much. She embraced vigorous debate,
but she always required doctoral nursing students to provide principled rationales for
their arguments.
We are both indebted to the many contributors to this text who are all paving
the way for an improved DNP degree that will ultimately gain its proper place and
foothold in the discipline. In many ways, the first edition of this text in 2010 could not
have been written earlier. Only now, in the second edition, after a decade of experi-
ence with the DNP, have the substantive issues with the degree begun to surface in a
constructive and perhaps less political way. The DNP degree is alive and thriving and
it is up to you, your faculty, and all the other stakeholders (and there are many) to
move forward, advance the nursing discipline, and improve the health of this nation
and the globe.■ NOTE
- Many revisionists considered the nursing doctorate (ND) degree the first “practice nursing doc-
torate,” when in reality, the title “practice doctorate” was not yet in the common vernacular nor
a recognized term when the degree was first offered at Case Western Reserve University in 1979
(Schlotfeldt, 1978).
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