Ph.D.-prepared nurses serve as researchers, educators, and leaders, driving innovations that improve patient care and shape the future of the field.
These experts play a crucial role in conducting research that creates the evidence for practice, influencing health policies, and, perhaps most importantly, educating and mentoring the next generation of nurses and scientists.“
Investing in Ph.D. nursing programs is not just about academic achievement,” says Connell School Dean Katherine E. Gregory, “it’s about ensuring that nursing continues to evolve and meet the ever-growing challenges of modern health care.”
“Fewer than 1 percent of nurses hold a Ph.D., and “these individuals are in high demand with the need for nurse scientists, faculty, and leaders on the rise.”
—National Nursing Workforce Survey (2021)
Gregory believes that supporting and training nurse scientists is critical. “We need a scientifically robust body of knowledge to guide nursing practice,” she says, “and that knowledge comes from nurses with Ph.D.s.”
A wide range of research opportunities are available to Ph.D.-prepared nurses. Thanks to their clinical knowledge and ability to conduct research, they work in a variety of settings: clinical environments, academia, public policy, biotech, and the startup industry, to name a few. “Nurse scientists are skilled in conducting research that will yield new findings that are ultimately translated to the bedside,” Gregory says.
She is particularly keen to see more nursing Ph.D. students bring their skills and experience to academic roles. “There’s no greater impact than educating the next generation of nurses and scientists, not only in the classroom but also in the research arena,” she says. “The students you teach and mentor will practice around the world, and your training will ripple outward.”
BUILDING THE TOOLBOX
Ph.D. candidate Jordan Keels
As an undergraduate, Jordan Keels studied biology and nursing and, after graduation, chose to pursue a nursing Ph.D. “I wanted to create my own research, put forth my own ideas, ask my own questions,” she says.
Jordan Keels
Today as a Ph.D. candidate, Keels studies diabetes and works closely with her mentor, Associate Professor Andrew Dwyer, a rare-disease researcher in endocrinology. In weekly meetings, Dwyer helps Keels shape research questions, and introduces her to colleagues and other faculty who help her develop new skills.
In addition to supporting her current work, Dwyer is preparing Keels for future projects, and he asks questions during their discussions to guide her: What are your goals? What kind of career do you want to have? What skills do you want to leave this program with? He also gives Keels opportunities to practice the skills she’ll eventually need for her own research. “He’s instrumental in setting up the ladder to help me succeed,” Keels said.
Keels was awarded an NIH grant in September 2024 for her dissertation research, which is an epidemiological study of diabetes risk among adults with COVID-19. She started conducting research in January alongside her clinical practice as a clinical research nurse practitioner at Massachusetts General Hospital. She says she is grateful for all the resources CSON has provided, from monthly seminars to sessions on grant writing and CVs.
“We get a very personalized education,” Keels says. “That’s what has helped to propel me forward.”
“I wanted to create my own research, put forth my own ideas, ask my own questions.”
—Ph.D. candidate Jordan Keels
LOOKING THROUGH THE NURSING LENS
Research scientist Karen Jennings Mathis
Karen Jennings Mathis, Ph.D. ’16, M.S. ’11, APRN, PMHNP-BC, is a research scientist at The Miriam Hospital in Providence, R.I., and an assistant professor at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School. Her interest in research began with an undergraduate degree in psychology: “I had my whole life planned out,” she says. “I was going to be a research assistant for a couple of years, then apply to Ph.D. programs in clinical psychology and become a practicing clinical psychologist.”
Karen Jennings Mathis
But while she was doing clinical work at McLean Hospital’s Klarman Eating Disorders Center, the nurses suggested she consider nursing school instead.
Jennings Mathis enrolled in the master’s program in nursing at Boston College and returned to McLean as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. That experience proved essential to her research after she entered CSON’s doctoral program, where she joined the lab of Barbara Wolfe, Ph.D. ’95, who studied eating disorders. “That was the beginning of my independent research career in the field,” Jennings Mathis says. “It’s a population I love working with.”
Her time at Boston College allowed her to meet many people working in the field of eating disorders. And given the University’s strong culture of mentorship and community, it’s no surprise that it was through the guidance of Barbara Wolfe—now provost at the University of Rhode Island (URI)—that Jennings Mathis began networking at conferences and forming relationships with potential collaborators and colleagues.
“Even though I’m no longer a practicing nurse, I always go back to my clinical experience to influence the questions I ask in my research,” Jennings Mathis says. She still consults with practicing colleagues to brainstorm and solicit feedback. When she completed a postdoc at the University of Chicago in a research environment dominated by clinical psychologists, her mentor, Jennifer Wildes, Ph.D., valued her unique perspective as a nurse. “The lens that you’re bringing to our research and clinical discussions is different and helpful and needed,” Wildes told her.
“Those problems that you see clinically can be systematically investigated to gain knowledge and a better understanding, to ultimately improve patient care, patient outcomes, and the experiences of nurses and all health care providers. That’s what the Ph.D. is all about.”
—Karen Jennings Mathis, Ph.D. ’16, M.S. ’11
Research Scientist, The Miriam Hospital
Assistant Professor, Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University
That nursing lens serves Jennings Mathis well in her research and clinical work and also as a leader in her field.
She taught for five years in URI College of Nursing’s psychiatric mental health program before heading to Brown and The Miriam Hospital, where she primarily conducts research at the NIH-funded Center of Biomedical Research Excellence for Stress, Trauma, and Resilience. She also advises clinical nurses at The Miriam Hospital on developing their clinical questions into scholarly inquiries, from evidence-based practice to research.
“It’s exciting to see nurses light up as they start to understand more about the scientific process,” Jennings Mathis says.
“Most of my research has been conducted in environments where I’m the only nurse scientist in the room,” she says. “That’s what I try to tell nurses: You have lots of ideas based on your clinical experiences. Those problems that you see clinically can be systematically investigated to gain knowledge and a better understanding, to ultimately improve patient care, patient outcomes, and the experiences of nurses and all health care providers. That’s what the Ph.D. is all about.”
ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
Chair of Pediatric Nursing Martha A.Q. Curley
Martha A. Q. Curley, Ph.D. ’97, RN, FAAN, is the Ruth M. Colket Endowed Chair in Pediatric Nursing at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a professor in nursing at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing. She says she sees an urgent need for nurse scientists in the field.
Martha A. Q. Curley
“We need expert clinicians who have good clinical questions, focused on what nurses actually do,” Curley says. “Nurses create the experience of care. They help patients and families live with disease and disability. And we need nursing science to support them.”
That need for support in the field set Curley on her path toward research. As a clinical nurse specialist in the multidisciplinary intensive care unit at Boston Children’s Hospital, she looked for existing research that could give her the best available evidence to inform her practice. “I started asking: How best should nurses care for a patient on this treatment? How best to take care of parents under a lot of stress? I had questions that weren’t addressed anywhere in the literature.” Boston College was right down the road, so Curley applied for the CSON Ph.D. program.
She was able to attend BC thanks to a fellowship, and she believes providing both financial and academic support to aspiring nurse scientists is crucial. “Schools of nursing should invest in faculty that can serve as mentors for Ph.D.-prepared nurses,” she says. “You can’t embody the identity of a nurse scientist unless you have role models.
“I was fortunate enough to study with the best and brightest in the field,” she continues. “Boston College had a stellar reputation for research, with faculty who were really making an impact.”
Curley graduated in three years, began applying for NIH grants, and quickly acquired funding for her first clinical trial. “And then I just kept going,” she says. “Bigger studies, larger populations, more clinical sites.”
“Schools of nursing should invest in faculty that can serve as mentors for Ph.D.-prepared nurses,” she says. “You can’t embody the identity of a nurse scientist unless you have role models.”
—Martha A. Q. Curley, Ph.D. ’97
Endowed Chair of Pediatric Nursing, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Professor, School of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania
Curley is now running two large clinical trials. She is the principal investigator on one that involves 50 sites, including international sites, testing to determine the best way to position critically ill children (supine or prone) and to ventilate them (standard or high-frequency). Her other trial is a cohort study of 750 kids who have received treatment in a pediatric intensive care unit. Curley and her team are mapping out “post-intensive care syndrome,” with the aim of providing resources and continued care to patients and their families after they leave the ICU.
“Nursing science is important—not just for nurses, but fundamentally, critically important for patients and families,” Curley says. Without nurse scientists to answer research questions, important inquiries about patient care will remain unanswered from a nursing perspective or will rely on data from other disciplines. “We need to be able to partner with our interdisciplinary colleagues,” she says. “When everybody brings their best work forward, patients and families will receive the best possible care.”