Nursing doctoral program evaluation: Alumni outcomes.

Meaningful examination of program outcomes is one of the most challenging tasks facing faculty and administrators involved in the design and delivery of educational programs. This article reports the outcomes for one doctoral program in nursing and elucidates salient conceptual and methodologic issues in educational outcomes research for this discipline. Career development, scholarly productivity, and professional leadership were the foci of this outcomes study. Three instruments were used; data were provided by alumni, graduate faculty, and alumni supervisors. Data analysis techniques included content analysis and descriptive and correlational statistics. Results showed that graduates embarked on diverse career paths with the majority employed in academic institutions. Most graduates reported active involvement in research, publications, presentations, and professional leadership. Employment pattern differences were noted between academic year and summer-only program graduates with associated divergence in career emphasis, research productivity, and job satisfaction. A positive correlation of time since degree conferral with scholarly productivity and professional leadership was noted. Recommendations for future research include refining outcomes, linking process to outcome, using longitudinal designs, and attending to unique nursing student and doctoral program characteristics.

The political role of illness narratives.

Cultural criticism is used to describe the political role of autobiographical illness narratives or pathographies. In expressing the subjective experience of illness, authors of pathographies illuminate ideological differences between patient and health care cultures, reveal the dominance of health care ideologies, and explicate patients' moral and political claims. The contributions of these literary works to nursing practice provide direction for relational restructuring. Gadow's concept of the relational narrative is proposed as a way to restore patient subjectivity and agency and establish the dialogue necessary for cultural pluralism in nursing and health care.

Illness behavior in rheumatoid arthritis.

OBJECTIVE: To explore prediagnostic illness behavior in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHOD: In this descriptive study, interview and medical records data from 50 female patients were analyzed using quantitative and qualitative techniques. RESULTS: Findings revealed a high incidence of symptom normalization, self-treatment, symptom comparison, and prolonged time to diagnosis with multiple misdiagnoses and physicians consulted. Most subjects reported invalidation of initial symptoms, multifaceted emotional distress, and relief upon accurate diagnosis. Significant associations were found between (a) illness-related symptom attributions and fewer physicians consulted (P < 0.05) and less invalidation (P < 0.05); (b) life stress events and fewer physicians consulted (P < 0.05) and shorter time to diagnosis (P < 0.05); (c) remissions and time to diagnosis (P < 0.05), number of physicians consulted (P < 0.001), and number of misdiagnoses (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Illness behavior in RA is prolonged, convoluted, and accompanied by personal and social stress. Invalidation of reported symptoms and relief upon definitive diagnosis are prominent features of the process.

Doctoral education in nursing: evaluation of a nontraditional program option.

Selected outcomes of an intensive, summer-only doctoral program in nursing were assessed using quantitative and qualitative data obtained from program-specific questionnaires and Educational Testing Service (ETS) Graduate Program Self-Assessment (GPSA) student and faculty questionnaires. Students evaluated the overall program as successful, satisfying, and stimulating, but also as stressful. Educational interventions to ameliorate student stress did not impact student evaluations of reported stress levels. Comparisons of summer-only and regular academic year students showed no differences in demographics, although differences between groups were found in long-term goals. Overall ETS questionnaire data were consistent with the Holzemer and Chambers (1986) baseline data for schools of nursing and showed no unusual patterns or trends. Summer-only and regular program student ratings were similar on all ETS scales.

Effects of an undergraduate research course on cognitive development.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a research methods course on undergraduate nursing students' cognitive development, or reflective judgment, level. The sample was comprised of 50 volunteer, female senior nursing students at a public Western university; half were enrolled in a research course and half served as controls. A cognitive development measure, Reflective Judgment Interview (RJI), was administered to both groups prior to and after the course. Data were analyzed for baseline levels of reflective judgment and by two-way repeated measures ANOVA to determine whether there were significant differences in pre-post reflective judgment scores between experimental and control groups. Baseline cognitive development levels were in the middle ranges of the seven-stage Reflective Judgment Model (RJM). No significant differences in reflective judgment level were found. Statistically significant differences between groups were found on one component of the reflective judgment measure, suggesting a positive growth trend that may have resulted from the experimental intervention.