The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing (JHSON) is one of only 28 schools of nursing nationwide to receive a grant to increase the number of nurses holding PhDs. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Future of Nursing Scholars program will provide financial support, mentoring, and leadership development to nurses who commit to earn their PhDs in three years. JHSON will select two nursing students to receive the scholarship.
“The Future of Nursing Scholars program is making an incredible impact in real time. These nurses will complete their PhDs in three years, a much quicker progression than is typically seen in nursing PhD programs,” said Julie Fairman, PhD, RN, FAAN, Future of Nursing Scholars program co-director and the Nightingale professor of nursing and the chair of the Department of Biobehavioral Health Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.
Sarah Szanton, PhD, RN, FAAN, director of the JHSON’s PhD program, added, “This is important to both students and the nursing profession. These PhD-prepared nurses will help meet the need for more faculty, and they will make great contributions to research and leadership. It’s also tremendous support to our students in pursuit of their goals.”
The Future of Nursing Scholars program is a multi-funder initiative. In addition to RWJF, Johnson & Johnson, Northwell Health, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, Sharp HealthCare, Rush University Medical Center, Care Institute Group, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center are supporting the Future of Nursing Scholars grants to schools of nursing this year.
JHSON is receiving its grant from RWJF. It will select two scholars in February, and those students will begin the Future of Nursing Scholars program this summer and their PhD studies this fall. JHSON has received funding every year since the scholarship launched in 2014, and there are five students in JHSON’s PhD program currently receiving funding through the grant.
In its landmark nursing report, the Institute of Medicine recommended that the country double the number of nurses with doctorates; doing so will prepare and enable nurses to lead change to advance health, promote nurse-led science and discovery, and put more educators in place to prepare the next generation of nurses. The Future of Nursing Scholars program is intended to help address that recommendation.
“We were pleased to see that enrollment in doctorate of nursing practice programs has increased 160% from 2010 to 2014. However, we want to ensure that we also have PhD-prepared nurse leaders in faculty and research roles. In the same time period, PhD enrollment has only increased by 14.6%. The nurses funded through the Future of Nursing Scholars program will make important contributions to the field and be well-prepared to mentor other nurses,” said Susan Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, co-director of the program and RWJF’s senior adviser for nursing.
The 51 nurses supported in this round will join 109 Scholars across the three previous cohorts. The program plans to add a fifth cohort which will bring the number of funded Scholars to more than 200 nurses.
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For more than 40 years the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has worked to improve the health and health care of all Americans. We are striving to build a national Culture of Health that will enable all to live longer, healthier lives now and for generations to come. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org. Follow the Foundation on Twitter at www.rwjf.org/twitter or on Facebook at www.rwjf.org/facebook.
Located in Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing is a globally recognized leader in nursing education, research, and practice and ranks #1 nationally among graduate schools of nursing and #2 for DNP programs, according to U.S. News & World Report. In addition, the school is ranked by QS World University as the # 2 nursing school in the world and is named the “Most Innovative Nursing Graduate Program in the U.S” by Best Master of Science in Nursing Degrees. The school is among the top nursing schools for Federal Research Grants and National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding. For more information, visit www.nursing.jhu.edu.
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