Occupational Biographical Decisions of U.S. Nursing Professionals for Doing a PhD. – Consequences for the Education in Nursing Science in Germany

Abstract

In Germany, nursing science has been developing since the early 1990s. Since then it is possible for nursing professionals (partly with, partly without prior 3-year vocational training) to do a bachelor's or master's degree in nursing science at universities of applied sciences. However, to do a Ph.D. they need to change to a university as in Germany only universities hold the right to award doctorates. But German universities have almost no faculties for nursing science so that the doctorate "unavoidably" needs to be done at the faculties for educational science, sociology or psychology, and usually students will achieve the title Doctor of Philosophy. With nursing professionals in the U.S., the situation is completely different: Their occupational biographies show that they have deliberately decided to do their PhD in adult education and not in nursing science. In this paper, as a first step the situation regarding the education system in Germany and the U.S. will be compared. Then the results of the analysis of the occupational biographical decisions will be presented. The concluding discussion will deal with the question what does the result of the analysis means for the German education system, respectively, nursing science in Germany.