Educating PhD students in research-intensive nursing doctorate programs regarding teaching competencies.

In October 2019 an invitational summit was held addressing nursing PhD program competencies within research-intensive universities. One topic of discussion was related to whether or not teaching competencies should be included in the PhD program curricula of research-intensive universities, and where competencies should be learned. The discussion indicated a lack of uniform consensus. Rather, schools should be clear about their goals-to focus solely on developing nurse scientists, or a broader mission of preparing graduates to embrace the full scope of academic work inclusive of discovery, teaching, application and integration, or even possibly roles outside of academia. The discussion group coalesced around the notion that preparation in teaching be dependent upon mission clarification. Schools could then decide whether to incorporate teaching competencies or whether the best way to achieve their mission was to limit the acquisition of teaching competencies to elective experiential learning alone, or a combination of didactics, supervised practica and experiential learning. Based upon the summit conversation, this is something that each PhD program will have to decide based upon its own purpose and the environment it is preparing graduates to occupy. Nevertheless, preparing for a too narrow and specific career trajectory may not accommodate flexibility in the marketplace.