How a Nursing Doctorate Can Transform Your Career and Open Doors to Leadership Roles

The only doctor you expect to come across in the hospital setting is an MD. Nurses can go to get a non-medical doctorate degree, but it takes a significant investment both in money and of their time. Perhaps for these reasons, achieving the highest possible academic degree in nursing is a relatively rare feat.

Is it worth all of the struggle? The answer will ultimately depend on what you hope to achieve. Getting a doctorate degree in nursing can open the door to leadership roles. It can also make your resume a lot more competitive if you are interested in a new career path. Does that justify the effort? You’ll have to read on to decide for yourself.

First, How Do You Get a Doctorate in Nursing School?

PhDs are the highest academic degree you can achieve. Virtually every discipline has them. They are rare in all situations, but perhaps uniquely so in healthcare where master’s degrees can already do so much to elevate your career options.

To get a PhD you will need to:

• Achieve your BSN: Getting a bachelor’s degree in nursing is a requisite component of working as an RN. It generally comes after four years of schooling but can be achieved in less time through accelerated programs, provided you already meet the base requirements. • Pass the NCLEX: The NCLEX is a standardized test that everyone must pass to begin working as a nurse. You take it 45 days—or more—after graduation. Once you overcome this obstacle, you can begin working as a nurse. • Move on to graduate school: Most people will work for a while as a nurse before beginning graduate school. In this way, they are better prepared to choose an academic emphasis that interests them. Either way, getting your master’s will be the next step. This takes around three years and many thousands of dollars. • The PhD: Still graduate school, technically but the elusive next step that very few people take. This takes another 2-3 years and many more thousands of dollars.

Why aren’t many people getting their PhD? Most probably it is because at the master’s level, you can begin working as a nurse practitioner. It’s here that your salary leaps dramatically into the six-figure range. It is also at this point that you will be able to make more choices independently and potentially even open up a private practice.

So what does a PhD even get you?

The Value of a PhD

PhDs can open doors that other degrees usually can’t. Someone with nursing’s highest degree may be eligible for extremely competitive leadership positions within the hospital:

• Health Service Manager: A six-figure salaried job that gives nurses the opportunity to help oversee how the entire facility is run. • Clinical Nurse Specialists: These nurses may focus on patient care, but they may also spend time on other rewarding aspects of the job, like research. • Chief Nursing Officer: A PhD can also be your ticket into the C-Suite. Chief Nursing Officers are among the highest-ranking professionals within any hospital system. Not only do they oversee nurses but they may also play a pivotal role in developing patient care strategies that will be followed by everyone within the hospital system.

It isn’t usually enough just to have the degree though. You also need to be in the right place at the right time. All of the positions listed here are the sorts of jobs that hospitals only have one of. If the position is filled when you are looking for new work, well. You won’t get it.

For that reason, many people who are trying to pursue nursing leadership positions at the highest level make the choice to travel for their work. This decision can be difficult—it may mean moving across state lines—but it is sometimes a necessary component of achieving the highest level positions in your chosen career. The rewards, at least, are compelling.

The chief nursing officer has the highest earning potential among any of the professionals described above. However, money usually is not the biggest motivating factor. If you just wanted cash, there are easier, less educationally intensive ways to get it in other career paths. Most people get their nursing PhDs because they are passionate about the idea of making a big impact in the world of healthcare, and they know that this is one way to do it.

PhDs are also a common passport into the land of academia. Many of the people who taught you in college had PhDs in nursing. Collegiate education is an incredibly competitive field—and yet another job that often forces people to make the difficult choice to move.

Many people find that it takes a few years to get fully established in higher education. Once you do, the compensation is good—six-figure salaries—and the opportunities are also nice. College professors help mold the next generation of nurses. In a world of extreme staffing shortages, that is an important role.

Conclusion

So, no. You really don’t have to get a doctorate degree in nursing to enjoy a successful career in the field. The vast majority of healthcare professionals will never even get their master’s, let alone a PhD.

If you are going to go this route, it should be first and foremost because you want to. First of all, it’s only through that interest that you will have enough gas in the tank to go the distance.

Second? There are easier ways to get it done. Stopping at your master’s degree still leaves you with six-figure career options. For that matter, there are tons of rewarding careers that wait on the other side of a relatively easy-to-get certification.

If you are going to go through the trouble of getting a PhD, you should do it because you are passionate and interested.

Will it open doors? Sure. But for the most part, they are only doors that people fully dedicated to the process will even want to go through in the first place.