University of Saint Francis Adds First Doctoral Program For Nurse Practitioners

Doctoral programs in nursing are a huge trend as of late, and the latest college to hop on board is University of Saint Francis, who have just announced that they will be offering a nursing doctoral program starting next fall semester.

“It’s the future of health care,” Connolly said. “The doctoral program will allow the highest caliber of patient treatment. These will be higher-functioning practitioners - more involved in system theory and all the facets of health care.”

In fact, the national trend is toward the doctoral degree in the field. The American Association of Colleges of Nursing recently announced that it will replace masters-level nurse practitioners degrees with the doctorate of nursing practice by 2015.

Nurse practitioner programs are highly desirable — NPs work almost at the same capacity of power and skill as a doctor, and a career as an NP can be a very successful one indeed. As such, schools have not been opening these programs in vain — according to the school, the program has gathered so much interested that a whopping 43 students are already registered for next year.

Tags: nurse practitioner, nursing degrees, nursing doctorate