Clinical Practice Within the Nurse Practitioner Academic Role: A Collaborative Self-Study Pilot

Abstract

PhD-prepared nurse practitioners (NPs) bring a unique combination of attributes to work within university settings. However, models for integrating clinical practice within academia are lacking for nursing faculty. As four PhD-prepared NPs, we completed a pilot collaborative self-study to explore how PhD-NPs working in academia experience the integration of clinical practice with academic work, and how clinical practice fits within workload and academic promotion models. Following initial data collection by email, we conducted a virtual focus group and analyzed the data using Braun and Clarke’s Reflexive Thematic Analysis. Identified themes included the value of clinical work; lack of understanding of the PhD-NP role; synergy between teaching, research, and clinical practice; challenges including time constraints and competing responsibilities; and the lack of formal models for PhD-NP role organization and compensation. PhD-prepared NPs felt clinical work added value to their teaching and research, although academic-clinical role organizational models were lacking. This pilot data must be contextualized within current North American policies and practice settings. Findings can be used to inform further study on the development of models for clinical practice in academia.