Doubling the Impact of Nursing Research
Throughout her more than 30-year career in academic nursing, Diane L. Holditch-Davis, Ph.D., B.S.N.’73, FAAN, saw over and over how Ph.D. students struggle financially. Although tuition is covered and some students are eligible for federal grants, many students struggle with finding funding to support their research and conduct a pilot work.
“For many students, the expenses needed for the dissertation really come out of their pockets,” says Holditch-Davis, Marcus E. Hobbs Professor of Nursing Emerita at Duke University School of Nursing. ”It is an extra expense that they weren’t really expecting.”
Holditch-Davis served for many years as director of doctoral and post-doctoral programs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing and director of the Ph.D. program and associate dean for research affairs at Duke University School of Nursing. For some students, she says, even the costs of conducting relatively inexpensive research, like surveys, are high. “If you’re going to survey 500 people and it costs 55 cents for an envelope to mail each survey, it becomes a significant expense for a student.”
