When the E.J. and V.M. Routhier Foundation invited the University of Rhode Island’s dean of nursing, Dayle Joseph, to write a proposal for a major grant, she knew just what to ask for.
She proposed creating a faculty chair to focus on primary care and on work force issues – specifically, how to address the state’s growing nursing shortage.
“The timing was just very good,” Joseph said in an interview. “We have identified the shortage in nurses, and now we need to do something about a solution.”
Last month, URI announced a $500,000 gift from the foundation to finance the new Routhier Chair of Practice at the College of Nursing over five years. The chair will be financed beyond that term, URI said, “if the mutual goals of the foundation and the University are met.”
The first person to hold that position is Lynne Dunphy, who has worked as a nurse for more than 35 years and in nursing education for more than 20. She joined URI last September.
“This is a really exciting opportunity for us,” Joseph said. “We’ve worked really hard on the nursing shortage, and it’s wonderful to have someone coming in who is going to put all of their energy into this.”
And because Dunphy has been involved in education in Florida, most recently as the assistant dean for graduate studies at the Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Fla., Joseph is looking forward to her perspective on these issues.
“She brings a new look,” Joseph said.
Dunphy said she plans to visit the different hospitals and other health care facilities in the state. She also wants to increase the number of nurses graduating from URI by working on a needs assessment that would show the educational needs and desires of nurses.
“The emphasis is on better-educated nurses to have the better-educated judgment and more leadership on the health care team,” Dunphy said.
A few years ago, the biggest problem was a lack of interest in studying nursing, Dunphy noted. Now, “we can’t take them all,” because there’s a shortage of faculty.
“We have so many fabulous people on waiting lists to get into nursing programs,” she said, “and we don’t have the faculty to educate them.”
Some of this is due to the low pay, Dunphy said, but she believes much of it is also about getting the message across about the benefits of teaching.
“The nursing faculty issue affects the amount of students that we can take, and this agenda has been moving forward in the state,” she said.
“We know some of the barriers to nurses pursuing that role, but I also think there are a lot of misconceptions. Nurses don’t realize the positive role of being nursing faculty. It’s always just looked at as really poor paying. I think we haven’t done a good job of promoting the nursing faculty.”
“You have a tremendous amount of autonomy as faculty, you’re constantly challenged by your students, your schedule is more your own, and the whole process of sharing your knowledge and exciting them is critical to our whole endeavor. To me it’s just been a fabulous career,” she added.
Dunphy also said that she will look at ways to involve the hospitals more in the teaching of nurses.
“We need to strengthen the bridges between the educational and the health care institutions to work on new models of educating students,”
she said. “I partly relocated because I see Rhode Island as a state committed to social justice and with the Brown [University] endowment and the emphasis on medical education, we have an opportunity for Rhode Island to be a model of quality, accessible and affordable health care for the nation. I think we need to all work towards this, and I think that it is accessible.”
Dunphy noted that she’s not starting from scratch.
“There are a lot of wonderful initiatives already under way,” she said, “and I see myself as another pair of hands to help move these forward and to bring in some new ideas.”
