Communicating the impact of professional doctorates : the development of graduate output domains

The development and implementation of professional doctorates across various societal domains stems, in part, from the need for highly educated professionals capable of driving and innovating changes in practice. These advanced programs prepare professionals to achieve improved outcomes in complex practice environments, advance applied research, and lead transformative initiatives. However, significant diversity exists in the nature and, most importantly, the intended impact of these programs. To address this challenge, a consortium of leaders in the field of Professional Doctorates in Nursing from four countries initiated the development of a framework for program outcomes. Our innovative and exploratory approach consisted of three phases: (1) a scoping review of the relevant literature, (2) an analysis of the graduate outcomes of professional doctorate programs at three different universities, and (3) a thematic analysis to synthesize the findings from the initial phases. This process ultimately led to the identification and description of five graduate outcome domains: Personal Achievement; Critical Self-Awareness and Professional Identity; Professional Citizenship; Discipline, Research, and Information Literacy; and Community-Based Academic Practice. Each domain has been described in terms of concrete behaviors and corresponding intended outcomes (McBride-Henry et al., 2024). Currently, we are preparing a Delphi study aimed at validating the content of these five domains. We invite experts from other educational domains to engage with our work and explore whether and how it may contribute to further development in nursing and beyond, particularly in other professional education fields. In this workshop, participants will be introduced to the recently developed graduate output domains for professional doctorates in nursing. Subsequently, the participants engage in an active working format to explore: 1) the relevance of this to their respective professional domains, 2) the potential for substantive refinement of the output domains, and 3) strategies for further developing these domains for research and education purposes.