I am in the first cohort of the Professional Doctorate Programme at Oxford Brookes. I got to know about the programme when the programme lead came to my NHS Trust to talk about it. I have always wanted to study at this level, I therefore jumped at the opportunity.
Experience on the programme
Initially it was quite daunting as I was moving from being an expert in practice to becoming a novice in research. However, with support from the tutors and colleagues in my cohort I quickly settled in.
Being part of a cohort has definitely been a massive positive, especially as I was coming back to academia after almost a decade away. The cohort provides a safe platform for discussions with colleagues who have similar interests and challenges.
One of the challenges is studying whilst working full time. I have been tactical about the way I use my free time, balancing academia, me time and family time. I found that the trick is to continuously chip away at my academic work as it is difficult to have a chunk of time dedicated to this. I therefore try to split my time. For example, I could have the morning on a Saturday before everyone wakes up dedicated to my academic work and then the afternoon spent with my family. Being organised and disciplined is also very important, when I have allocated an hour to do something, I ensure I do use that one hour for the planned work.
I am passionate about evidence based practice, quality improvement and generating nursing based solutions to nursing problems. I felt the DNURs would give me the skills to influence the above passions. I have studied with Oxford Brookes previously at MSc level and the supervision I received then was one aspect that attracted me to study the DNURs programme with the university. The idea of a cohort was quite appealing as it provided contact with like-minded colleagues. It is very important to have this informal group as it acts a source of encouragement when the tough gets going.
