14 ■ I: HISTORICAL AND THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS FOR ROLE DELINEATION
nursing, with the publication and work of Dr. Hildegard Peplau’s Interpersonal Relations
in Nursing in 1952. Her work spurred interest in this specialty, and the editor of Nursing
Research at one early point emphasized (or complained about?) the overrepresentation
of articles specific to psychiatric– mental health nursing (Bunge, 1962). Nevertheless, the
momentum was slowly growing toward nursing as a scientific discipline. With the first
federal research grants in nursing established in 1955 through a new research and fel-
lowship branch within the federal Division of Nursing Resources (founded in 1948) and
the first grants awarded that fall, and following later implementation of the Nurse–
Scientist Training Program in 1961, the growing need for nurses with a doctorate was
emerging (Gortner, 1986, 2000). Interestingly, with so few doctoral programs in nurs-
ing in 1961 (there were only three), this innovative research training program prepared
nurses for PhDs in other fields besides nursing. The idea was that hopefully these early
nurse scientists from the fields of sociology, anthropology, and psychology, for example,
would graduate and then pursue nursing scientific inquiry and establish new doctoral
programs in nursing. Table 1.2 lists the first 10 doctoral programs in nursing, and the
prevalence of the PhD degree or the clinical doctorate (the DNSc in particular) should
be noted. What is perhaps fascinating is why the Teachers College degree model EdD
in nursing education was never replicated until the last several years where we have
seen several EdD in nursing education programs started. There have recently been new
PhDs in nursing education (the University of Northern Colorado established in 2004),
but they appear to be less common than the EdD in Nursing Education.^5
It is obvious, especially with the further establishment of the First Division of Nursing
Field Research Center founded in San Francisco in 1962, that nursing was aiming toward
a scientific orientation (Vreeland, 1964).^6 Whether that would evolve at the expense of the
discipline’s original practice orientation is another question. This author would add that
it is the failure of the discipline to bridge its two disciplinary orientations, what Peplau
TABLE 1.2 First Doctoral Nursing Programs in the United States
Rank Institution Degree Year
1 Teachers College, Columbia University EdD 1933
2 New York University PhD 1934
3 University of Pittsburgh PhD 1954
4 Boston University DNSc 1960
5 University of California San Francisco DNSc 1964
6 Catholic University DNSc 1967
7 Texas Woman’s University PhD 1971
8 Case Western Reserve University PhD 1972
9 University of Pennsylvania DNSc 1974
University of Texas- Austin PhD 1974
10 University of Alabama- Birmingham DSN 1975
University of Illinois— Chicago PhD 1975
University of Michigan PhD 1975
Wayne State University PhD 1975
University of Arizona PhD 1975