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#Ph. D. in Nursing Science Program

Program Overview

The Ph.D. in Nursing Science program prepares graduates to pursue a career of externally funded research, scholarly publication, and professional leadership. Our faculty’s expertise and program curriculum focuses on the care of vulnerable populations and the innovative ways to promote health equity for individuals and communities. We recruit talented and diverse applicants who posses a research interest that matches our focus and the commitment to accomplishing the program milestones.

The Ph.D. in Nursing Science program is designed to fast track students to graduation in as little as three years of full-time study or four years of part-time study. Typical career goals of our graduates include university faculty, researchers, and clinical and organizational leaders. Non-nurses with health-related experience or interests may also benefit from this terminal degree, and should seek advice from the program director about eligibility.

The Ph.D. in Nursing Science program is based on essential competencies required for the beginning of independent research in nurse science. These include: theory application, research design and methods, data analysis, ethics, team science, the mentored conduct of research, leadership, policy, and knowledge translation and dissemination. Core competencies are developed through the required courses, offered in four consecutive semesters in the full time program of study (36 semester hours). After that, students embark on their dissertation research. During candidacy students may enroll in electives that build on the core foundation to individualize the program: mentored teaching, mentored policy, ethics, and education electives.

The Ph.D. in Nursing Science program enables students to:

• Utilize philosophical, theoretical, and conceptual foundations to guide the generation of new knowledge in health care.
• Develop expertise within an area of inquiry, identifying critical gaps in knowledge and reflecting a nursing and transdisciplinary perspective.
• Conduct theory-guided research to test, generate, and extend knowledge that informs health care systems, health policy, and the evidence base for practice.
• Demonstrate proactive leadership related to a selected area of scholarship.
• Model values consistent with integrity in science and professional nursing.

Why Consider MUSC?

MUSC, an academic health sciences center, ranks within the top 100 in the nation for receipt of federal funding. Our doctoral students have access to expert clinicians and basic and applied scientists from multiple disciplines. Recently, the MUSC College of Nursing was ranked #1 among online graduate programs in US News and World Report. We reached 14th in NIH funding, with 75% of our educator-research faculty funded as principal investigators on federally funded grants. We benchmark our program success through the high diversity of our students, excellent retention and graduation rates, and ongoing publications and funded grants of our students and graduates. We believe faculty and peer mentoring combined with academic support services is essential to academic success. Our students are very satisfied with the academic rigor of our program, the sense of a learning community, the relationships among students and faculty, and the flexibility of learning from a distance. We invite you to browse our website. Read our faculty research interests, student accomplishments and testimonials to see why you might consider MUSC College of Nursing.