Brainstorming Nursing Research Ideas

This blog post consists of my ramblings about nursing research. Enjoy! 

My dream job is working as a professor at a university teaching psychiatry and psychology classes. I imagine teaching undergrad, grad, and doctorate level classes. I would absolutely LOVE to work closely with a student and help them conduct research. Teaching, explaining, learning, educating, creating, relearning, reading, writing, developing… these are the things I love. I actually do spend time brainstorming (well, kinda like daydreaming) about things I want to study, research, obsess over, and write about. Here is a mind map I made before entering my DNP program of things I wished to study:

Not the prettiest of mind maps, but still something. Almost two years have passed since then. Some of my interests have changed, while other remain the same. Lately I’ve been blogging about online branding skills for nurses, and you see I was interested in self-marketing back then. I still am interesting in technology, psychiatric ward architecture, and “non-nurse” nurse practitioners (NPs who never worked as nurses).  In the picture to the left, you’ll see that I have written “BLT” as a topic of interest. Bright Light Therapy. That is the topic I selected for my DNP Capstone/Scholarly Project. For the record, if you have questions about light therapy, I am your girl. I feel like I’ve read every book and research article out there. Whew! 

Over the course of the DNP program, I have learned some about research procedures and a lot about myself. I’ve learned that I enjoy big picture, theoretical, philosophical research; that I prefer to do my research by digging into old literature, making big conclusions, and synthesizing it. I like being alone, surrounded by books with earmarked pages, a scattering of papers, and at least 4 different colors of highlighters. 

The following is a list of research topics I am interested in now:

• History of psychiatry (and history of any specific disorder)
• History of psychopharmacology
• Philosophy of psychopharmacology
• Philosophy of science of psychiatry
• The antipsychitry movement 
• The critical psychiatry movement
• Philosophical implications of human-technology interactions 
• The impact of technology on human relationships 

I hope someday I get to research one of these topics! I get excited just thinking about being a professor! Anyway, thanks for listening everyone!