538 ■ III: ROLE FUNCTIONS OF DOCTORAL ADVANCED NURSING PRACTICE
respective marginalization of that content. The issues of ethics in health care and nurs-
ing are complex and have become even more paramount. Nurses and nursing students
generally have great interest in all aspects of ethics in nursing. Having more specialists
(nurses and non- nurses) with clinical ethics training, not simply an interest in ethics,
would likely be welcomed in the modern interdisciplinary and interprofessional health
care environment.
Essential III: Clinical Scholarship and Analytical Methods for Evidence- Based Practice
There has probably been no more controversial essential than Essential III. From the very
beginning there has been immense debate over what a scholarly end product should
constitute, the culminating written document for a recipient of the DNP degree. One of
my dean colleagues suggested in a conversation several years ago that the DNP actually
should not require any such scholarly end product (like the dissertation that is expected
and required of the PhD graduate). She explained that because the medical doctorate
(MD) was a similar professional doctorate (just like the DNP) and does not require a
scholarly project of any form, then neither should the DNP. She admitted it was a bold
idea, but that her faculty would never vote to do such a radical thing. I actually gave
her idea some considerable thought and began to revisit my own notions of what the
DNP degree should require. With my colleague, Mary Ellen Smith Glasgow, now dean
of the Duquesne University School of Nursing, we published “Global Perspectives on
the Professional Doctorate” in the International Journal of Nursing Studies in 2011 (Dreher
& Smith Glasgow, 2011). We noted that in the international community, there really
is no such thing as a doctorate that does not include the conduct of “research” to a
greater or lesser extent. The idea that a new practice doctorate (or professional doc-
torate) in nursing would not involve the generation of some kind of empirical (new)
knowledge was characterized as an “idea that should not cross the ocean” (from the
shores of the continental U.S. across the Atlantic of course). Over the course of a decade,
we have now rightfully moved from the 2006 Essentials document with an admonition
TABLE 24.4 The Joint Commission Core Measure Sets
Perinatal care
Stroke
Venous thromboembolism
Substance use
Tobacco treatment
Hospital outpatient department
Pneumonia measures
Heart failure
Acute myocardial infarction
Surgical care improvement project
Hospital- based inpatient psychiatric services
Emergency department
Immunizations