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Aim: To examine to what degree nursing research, represented by PhD theses, demonstrates evidence of academic drift. Background: The historical development of nursing has included a professional journey from uneducated ‘night watchers’ to graduate nurses with access to study at the master’s and doctoral levels. In the European context, this journey refers to a description of a change in education and knowledge production, characterized as academic drift. Design: This study has a descriptive design. Sixty-one PhD theses in nursing science completed during the period 1994 through 2015 were examined. The analysis was stimulated by Kim’s typology of theoretical domains for nursing. The study was carried out between 2015–2016. Findings: The findings showed that most PhD theses were clustered in the client domain and the practice domain, with some theses being clustered within the client–nurse domain and very few in the environment domain. The prevalent PhD domains have remained fairly unchanged in the last 15 years. Qualitative research was the most commonly used methodology, irrespective of the domain addressed. The PhD theses thematically described the challenges faced by patients, the changes associated with illness and diseases and how nurses can help, intervene and alleviate; what nurses and nurse students do when they are nursing and preparing for nursing; and the interaction between patients and nurses. Conclusion: This study reveals that the thematic issues of the PhD theses are, by description, deeply connected to the practice of nursing and the nursing context and do not support the claims of academic drift. This study’s findings give also support to an assumption that PhD theses contribute to strengthening nursing knowledge and, by implication, nursing practice.

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