Challenges of Training Nursing Ph.D: A Review Study

One of the most critical priorities of the Ph.D. in Nursing is to ensure the quality of its programs, which will be useful in the development and improvement of educational programs. Given that different studies have presented different reports in this field, there are still challenges in educating nursing students in the doctoral program. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the challenges of doctoral education in nursing schools worldwide.

This review study was performed in 2019 in PubMed, Science Direct, Scopus, Google Scholar, SID, and Mag Iran with the keywords Challenge, Nursing Education, Education Process, Nursing Ph.D. PRISMA checklist was used to review and control the quality of articles. Finally, considering the inclusion criteria, 27 articles were included in the study among the found articles.

The results were examined in 4 categories. The findings showed that although nursing doctoral programs have improved in recent years, this course's challenges include the small number of faculty members, the provision of mandatory and repetitive courses, insufficient resources and budget, and student dissatisfaction.

Few evaluations have been done on nursing doctoral programs. Challenges and opportunities created during the doctoral program require program management during this period. Therefore, when planning a doctorate, university administrators should pay attention to the limited resources, budget, and experienced supervisors, hire professors with different specialties, and provide educational and financial resources to support quality programs.