In this final episode in a saga on the hypothetical demarcation problem in academic nursing research between DNP- and PhD-trained clinical investigators, Ian describes the importance of individual professionals' values and self-identification with practitioner-scholar or research scientist and how there are larger considerations at play, here, than merely the programmatic-level factors of one's doctoral study. Ian discusses the shortage of tenured research faculty in clinical nursing research in the United States and how a new cadre of properly trained DNP-prepared research scholars designed to augment and facilitate dissemination of the work of their nurse PhD colleagues should be fostered rather than suppressed, and discusses some new relevant data indicating that a large proportion of nursing-specific funds doesn't even go to nurse scientists. Email comments and questions to: clinicalappraisal@gmail.com.
