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. 2019 Nov;24(7):470-485.
doi: 10.1177/1744987119877213. Epub 2019 Oct 12.

The role of PhD-prepared, hospital-based nurses: an inter-Nordic study

Erik Elgaard Sørensen  1 , Kathrine Hoffmann Kusk  2 , Asa Muntlin Athlin  3 , Kirsten Lode  4 , Tone Rustøen  5 , Susanne Salmela  6 , Bibi Hølge-Hazelton  7
Affiliations

The role of PhD-prepared, hospital-based nurses: an inter-Nordic study

Erik Elgaard Sørensen et al. J Res Nurs. 2019 Nov.

Abstract

Background: Little is known about PhD-prepared nurses employed at Nordic university hospitals, how they are organised, what their practices look like or what career pathway they have chosen.

Aims: The purpose was to investigate and compare the prevalence of PhD-prepared nurses employed at university hospitals in the Nordic countries, to investigate what functions they fulfil and what research activities they undertake and to document how they describe their ideal work life.

Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study. An electronic questionnaire was sent to 245 PhD-prepared nurses working at a university hospital in one of six Nordic countries and 166 responses were achieved (response rate 67%). Descriptive analyses were performed using SPSS Statistics.

Results: The study found notable differences among PhD-prepared nurses employed at university hospitals with respect to work function; organisational structure; satisfaction about time split between research and practice; and the mean scores of time spend on research, clinical practice and teaching, supervision and administration.

Conclusions: In order to succeed with capacity building among the nursing workforce, collaboration and networking with other researchers and close contact to clinical practice is important. The role of the hospital-based, PhD-prepared nurse needs to be better described and defined to ensure that evidence-based care is provided.

Keywords: PhD-prepared nurse; cross-sectional survey; inter-Nordic; organisational structure; research; university hospitals; work functions.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Overview of milestones for the development of the academic development for nurses in the Nordic countries. (*No numbers for 2017 were available for Norway.). Note: The numbers are based on data from the nursing unions and from different educational institutions. As no exact numbers exists, they are only an estimate. The numbers present an overview and a trend of the development of scientific competence in each country and some variations between the Nordic countries.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Distribution of work functions across Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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