Advanced Degrees: Your Face Here

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Advanced Degrees: Your Face Here

If you think an advanced degree in nursing is for you—that your expertise, your career and the community you serve would benefit from it—you may well be right

By Janet Anderson

If you think such a challenge is beyond you, think again. Others have done it, and there are more options available today than ever before.

An advanced degree in nursing doesn’t even have to concentrate strictly on nursing. An M.S. or a Ph.D. can be earned in any field that will enable a nurse to perform his or her job more capably. An advanced degree might be in education, psychology, public policy or health policy, as well as nursing science or nursing theory.

Carla J. Serlin

Carla J. Serlin, director of the Ethnic Minority Fellowship Program of the American Nurses Association, explains that nursing education today is much broader than it was 30 years ago. In the 1960s and ’70s, she notes, most of the degree programs in policy, for example, focused on government policy—politics and economics—not about health policy and its related research, which is a fairly recent field.

“My advanced degree isn’t in nursing. It’s in the sociology of medicine,” explains Serlin, who received her Ph.D. in 1980. “I was interested in minority health care behavior—in health programming, health behavior and improving the access of underserved populations to the health care delivery system. At that time there wasn’t an opportunity to pursue those particular interests within a nursing doctorate program.”

Sandra Millon Underwood

Sandra Millon Underwood, who received her Ph.D. in education and social policy in 1986, says the diversity of advanced programs now available should encourage more nurses to pursue a doctorate. Underwood, an American Cancer Society Oncology Nursing Professor at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and a Northwestern Mutual Life Research Scholar, applies her knowledge to a number of research projects about survivorship, cancer prevention and cancer control among underserved populations. “I wanted to prepare myself more in the field of educational research,” she says. “At that time, there were not as many doctorate programs in nursing. But now there are many more doctorate programs established within nursing itself, so that nurses who are interested in advanced degrees might pursue an educational curriculum with a Ph.D. in nursing.”

No Pain, No Gain

The professional gains from an advanced degree are as varied as the degrees themselves, and depend to a large extent on the goals of the individual nurse. Kem Louie, professor and chairperson of the department of graduate nursing at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, N.Y., says, “When I graduated from my B.S.N. program, I didn’t think I needed any further training to do my job. But once I’d worked in the clinical area for about a year, I realized I had other aims in nursing—to teach and to be a clinical specialist. As a clinical specialist, I needed more in-depth knowledge and skills.”

Serlin describes the specialized knowledge her degree provides her: “I learned about program development and health care delivery systems, and I traced the relationship between poverty, health and minority health care behaviors. That background means I don’t have many problems with the current changes in the health care delivery system, and it makes me very marketable today, both within nursing and in health fields in general. I had no idea which way the system was going,” she adds. “I simply knew what I was interested in.”

Many nurses feel the advanced degree allows them to effectively enrich the field of knowledge in nursing, not only by expanding their own knowledge, but also by imparting their wisdom to others. “The most significant reward for me,” says Underwood, “is the fact that I am able to contribute more to the profession through scholarship. I not only engage more effectively in teaching nursing students about oncology nursing practice, but I am much more involved in research. I now have the skills that allow me to design an innovative oncology curriculum for the educators and their clinicians, and to make a major contribution to the profession, to the science and to the literature.”

Of the obstacles to pursuing an advanced degree, the most obvious may be financial. The cost of earning a master’s or doctorate degree is often seen as prohibitive, either directly because of tuition expenses or indirectly, given the loss of income while a student is enrolled. Nurses who have followed this route, however, encourage others to seek out available financial assistance.

“I received a scholarship to continue my education for the last two years that I was at Northwestern,” says Underwood, “but securing financial support was a real challenge. In this day and age, however, there is much more support available for students who are pursuing advanced degrees in nursing, especially advanced degrees in oncology nursing. Seek out multiple sources for support and funding. Too many nurses don’t realize how much support is available through the National Institutes of Health, especially the National Institute for Nursing Research, the National Cancer Institute and the American Cancer Society.”

Serlin suggests the Internet as a way to locate funding sources: “Get on the computer and find yourself some scholarships. There’s money out there; you just have to go shopping for it.”

Individual universities usually maintain lists of scholarships and grants as well, generally at each facility’s graduate office of nursing. A frequently listed source is either state or federal government agencies. “They’re usually based on both scholarship and need, not totally on need,” explains Louie. “A lot of the scholarships are given for full-time study, meaning that if you have to work full time at your job, it’s very difficult. There is also money from the state and federal government, called Primary Health Care Scholarships, which are available for part-time practice nursing. The trade-off is that you have to work in an area where there are populations that are underserved.”

Some hospitals will also pay their nurse employees to earn an advanced degree, Louie points out. “But some of the institutions have a limit to how much they will pay for tuition—$3,000, possibly $2,000 or less—and some of them will not pay if you get a C [grade average]. With others, if you accept the tuition reimbursement, you have to stay at the institution an extra year. So it’s very important to look carefully at these tuition reimbursement benefits that are being offered by hospitals.” (For more information on scholarships, see our Scholarships section.)

The Juggling Act

The part-time track may seem like an ideal way to simultaneously further one’s career and continue in financial independence. According to Serlin, working while earning an advanced degree is challenging but not impossible. “I worked part time during my doctorate program,” she says. “I taught nursing at a community college, I worked for the State of Colorado as director of the displaced homemaker program, I did all sorts of interesting things. But I managed to carry a full-time load, and I managed to graduate in about three and a half years. I was just very busy.”

For Underwood, who worked full time while studying part time, there was the problem of juggling her teaching schedule, her study schedule and a long commute. “I lived in the suburbs of Chicago, worked on the south side of Chicago and studied on the north side of Chicago. But it was worth every mile,” she says. “If I had to do it over again I’d do it without hesitation.”

And of course it’s essential, as Louie points out, that one’s workplace be understanding of the situation and willing to allow a flexible schedule.

Even if an advanced degree candidate is fortunate enough to be able to study full time, there may still be family responsibilities which require at least as much flexibility as a full-time job. Serlin and Underwood were both pregnant during part of their degree programs. “I was pregnant during my master’s program,” says Serlin. “I stayed home for the summer and dragged [my son] back to school with me in the fall. Before he was walking I was back in school, doing my doctorate. My daughter, who was four years older, was in kindergarten. Small children take a lot of time and energy, but they go to bed at 7:30 or 8:00 at night, which gives you the rest of the evening to pursue your studies quietly.”

The importance of family support cannot be overstated, says Louie. “First and foremost, my family was in support of my doing this,” she says, “and I don’t think I would have been able to complete my program of study without their support.”

“Going to graduate school does change your family, and you need to have a support system and explain to your family what to expect,” adds Serlin.

Those Who Know

Many of these challenges can be avoided or minimized by talking with other minority nurses who have already walked the advanced degree path. They can act as mentors, imparting information to the new student. A mentor should ideally be in the same field as the student in order to facilitate the student’s plan of study and enhance his or her pursuit of the degree. “I think it was very important that I knew other people who had attended the program, so I could find out specifically what kind of requirements there were, what type of paperwork to gather and how to phrase the admission essay so that I was accepted to the program,” says Louie.

Underwood also notes the assistance that a mentor can provide in enabling the student to construct a plan of study. “It’s important to have a plan in mind,” says Underwood, “of what you would like to accomplish and how you would like to contribute to the profession... [You should] carefully select a program that allows you to develop so that you will be able to accomplish those goals.”

Not doing this can cost a student time and money, explains Serlin. Many people come into a doctorate program knowing they want the degree, but not knowing what they want to study, and it takes them at least two years longer to complete the program, she notes. “If you come into the program with some idea of the area you want to study, you can guide your program so that you are doing a lot of your reading, your research and your theory courses around that topic. That way, you are developing expertise as you go through the program. When you get to the dissertation, a lot of that background reading and development is already done.”

Janet Anderson is a contributing writer from Princeton, N.J.