Quality of Nursing Doctoral Education in Australia and South Africa

Purpose:

To describe the context and quality of nursing doctoral education and to analyze main issues facing the quality of nursing doctoral education from perspectives of nursing deans, academic personnel/faculty, doctoral students/graduates and doctoral students in South Africa and Australia.

Methods:

A total of 159 faculty and students/graduates participated in the cross sectional on-line survey and they were from a total of 19 nursing schools from universities in these 2 countries.  Country specific total numbers were: 19 nursing schools (12 from the South Africa and 7 from Australia); 39 faculties (26 from South Africa and 13 from Australia; and 120 students/graduates (87 from South Africa and 33 from Australia).  

Results:

The three areas with the most problems in South Africa were related to:  doctoral students (admission, progression, and graduation); availability of institutional resources (human, material and technical resources) and the curriculum (goal, content and supervision).A number of concerns in Australia include the need for better resourcing of doctoral education and the challenge of achieving greater numbers of qualified faculty for doctoral student supervision.

Conclusion:

The exploration and description of nursing doctoral education provided baseline data of the quality of nursing doctoral education in South Africa and Australia. This study identified threats to the quality and strategies to improve the quality of doctoral nursing education in both countries.