Nurses' various ways of conceiving their learning process as doctoral students: a phenomenographic study.

Aim: The aim was to describe variations in how doctoral students conceive their learning process to become researchers in the light of their professional background as nurses.

Background: Nursing research is an emerging discipline and the number of nurses who acquire a doctor's degree is increasing.

Method: The study had a descriptive, qualitative design with a phenomenographic approach and was carried out by means of 20 interviews.

Results: Three different description categories emerged: (1) A learning process that provides a synthesis of different parts of the research process aimed at developing preparedness for action within the nursing profession. (2) A learning process where practical problems are integrated with and problematised in relation to scientific theories. (3) A learning process involving the transformation from nurse to researcher.

Conclusions: The description categories revealed that the focus was on solving problems that occur in health care and synthesising them by means of research tools. Furthermore, the doctoral students explored different ways of understanding and developing their awareness of the nature of research. Focus was also on the nursing profession and practice and a shift towards the role of a researcher was evident.