Doctoral students reflect on how to enhance capacity for knowledge translation in Canadian PhD nursing programmes

Doctor of philosophy (PhD)-prepared nurses are positioned to lead policy change, reform nursing education and integrate research into clinical practice. To prepare future nurse leaders for this role, doctoral programmes must include opportunities to build knowledge translation (KT) capacity.

This article presents a student-led initiative that explored the context of KT capacity development in Canadian PhD nursing programmes.

The project involved an environmental scan of doctoral nursing curricula and a roundtable discussion with 15 doctoral students at a nursing school in Quebec, Canada. The scan revealed that formal KT training primarily focused on research skills, while informal activities centred on social networking.

The roundtable discussion highlighted students' limited exposure to KT as well as their interest in greater access to informal training and collaborative opportunities with researchers and knowledge users.

These findings underscore the need to integrate KT capacity development into doctoral training to support future nurse leaders in bridging the gap between research and practice.