Columbia Nursing Spring 2025 Columbia Nursing by Columbia University School of Nursing

QI PRACTICUM, FIRST OF ITS KIND, EXPANDS MINDS AND CAREERS

GLOBAL CLINICAL EXPERIENCES FORGE VIVID MEMORIES

INAINURSING

opportunity to work with you and your advisors to evaluate your charitable giving strategy. Expand pathways in nurse leadership and advance health for all.

C At Columbia, Facing Change With Resilience and Innovation From the Dean

hange, as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said, is the only constant in life. Sometimes change brings challenges—as has most certainly been the case at Columbia in recent months. But it can also generate resilience and innovation, and we have long tried at Columbia Nursing to approach change from that perspective.

As you explore this issue, keep in mind that the production cycle of a magazine spans many months. That’s why we focus in these pages on enduring truths, rather than breaking news—during times of challenge and times of calm alike. So the stories here highlight not headline news but the good we continue to do and the innovation we continue to drive—for nursing education, practice, and research. Ahead of the curve as always, we have already begun to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into our curriculum as a tool for teaching and learning—as detailed in the cover feature, which begins on page 8. Some faculty members are using AI, largely ChatGPT and other generative or large language models, to produce case scenarios that allow students to practice their diagnostic skills and create care plans. Others are using it to help students improve their writing skills. Meanwhile, students are using AI to help them understand course material, like statistics, and to create practice quizzes as study aids.

AI is not new to Columbia Nursing. For nearly a quarter of a century, we have been training doctoral and postdoctoral research students in various computational applications, under the rubric of informatics, making us the world’s leader in AI-based nursing research. Our scholars are, for example, exploring AI’s predictive ability to improve outcomes for patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease or to identify type 2 diabetes mellitus in primary care settings—which is critical for underserved populations, as they often lack access to care.

Improving access to care around the world is also at the heart of Columbia’s mission—and is the focus of the feature on page 20. Our Global Student Clinical Program recently marked 10 years of giving students an opportunity to learn and practice nursing in some of the world’s most medically underserved countries. From changing dressings on a badly burned child, to caring for patients with leprosy, all while navigating language barriers, our students have learned first-hand numerous ways of delivering care compassionately and equitably under the most challenging conditions. Since 2014, more than 300 Columbia Nursing students have par-

ticipated in the program, including 37 who completed a rotation at one of 11 sites worldwide just last year.

Columbia Nursing prepares students to face challenges at home, too—as the story on page 4 makes clear. Three students are currently addressing food insecurity by partnering with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Food Policy (MOFP). They have proposed temporarily subsidizing deliveries of fresh, healthy food to eligible New Yorkers living in historically underserved neighborhoods, where the MOFP is planning to eventually build dozens of grocery stores.

Such innovations make Columbia among the country’s top nursing schools. Our steady push for innovation and excellence inspired us to create a Quality Improvement (QI) Practicum in the Master’s Direct Entry program, the only such practicum geared to students at the prelicensure stage. This 10-week course—the focus of the final feature in this issue, on page 14—raises students’ awareness of quality and safety beyond the bedside by introducing them to the theory and practice of strategic hospital-based QI initiatives. During the practicum’s on-site module at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (NYP), students support a range of patient safety initiatives, such as the hospital’s procedures for preventing the hospital-based infection Clostridioides difficile—in the process learning about data collection methods, NYP’s QI tool, criteria for scoring their observations, and how to provide feedback to nurse leaders. These skills reinforce our profession’s mandate to always put patient safety first. They can also lead to career opportunities in the quality, regulatory, and compliance areas of nursing.

Quality improvement, innovation, and caring for the underserved are more than part of Columbia Nursing’s curriculum. They are the values that have guided us throughout our history. Despite all the changes taking place around us, we remain true to them because they stand for who we are. These are tumultuous times, but we will come through them.

LORRAINE FRAZIER, PhD, RN, FAAN Dean, Columbia University School of Nursing

Mary O’Neil Mundinger Professor of Nursing Senior Vice President, Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Columbia Nursing

Lorraine Frazier, PhD, RN, FAAN

Dean, Columbia University School of Nursing

Mary O’Neil Mundinger Professor of Nursing

Senior Vice President, Columbia University Irving Medical Center

ALUMNI NEWS EDITORS:

Janice Rafferty Grady

Associate Dean, Development and Alumni Relations

Janine Handfus

Associate Director, Annual Fund

Sharon Sobel

Assistant Director, Alumni Relations

BOARD OF ADVISORS:

Laura Ardizzone, DNP ’10

Director of Nurse Anesthesia Services, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center New York, NY

Felesia Bowen, PhD ’10

Professor, Associate Dean for Access and Engagement, University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Nursing Birmingham, AL

Brenda Barrowclough Brodie, BS ’65 Durham, NC

Kevin Browne, DNP ’18

Associate Executive Director, Chief Nurse, Northwell Health Lenox Hill Hospital; Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital; and Lenox Health Greenwich Village New York, NY

Paul Coyne, DNP ’16, MBA President and Co-Founder, Inspiren; Senior Vice President and Chief Nurse Executive, Hospital for Special Surgery New York, NY

Delphine Mendez de Leon, BS ’78, MBA, MPH Chief Strategy Officer, University Hospital of Brooklyn New York, NY

Angela Clarke Duff, BS ’70 Forest Hills, NY

Marjorie Harrison Fleming, BS ’69 Chair Emerita, Board of Advisors Seabrook Island, SC

Susan Fox, BS ’84, MBA President and CEO, White Plains Hospital White Plains, NY

Karen Hein, MD

Adjunct Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Dartmouth Medical School Jacksonville, VT

Columbia Nursing is the magazine of the Columbia University School of Nursing and is published twice a year

Produced by the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing

Linda Muskat Rim, Editor-in-Chief

Senior Associate Dean, Strategic Communications and Marketing

DESIGN AND ART DIRECTION: Eson Chan

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:

Anne Harding

Andrea Kott, MPH

Kenneth Miller

Debra S. Heinrich, EdD ’22 Bedford, NY

Mary Turner Henderson, BS ’64 San Francisco, CA

Richard I. Levin, MD

Professor Emeritus, McGill and New York Universities; President, Optimal Health Advising, LLC New York, NY

Wilhelmina Manzano, MA

Group Senior Vice President, Chief Nursing Executive, and Chief Operating Officer for Perioperative Services, NewYork-Presbyterian New York, NY

Janet Ready, BS ’81, Chair Chief Operating Officer, Premier Medical Group Poughkeepsie, NY

Patricia Riley, BS ’76

Captain (Retired), U.S. Public Health Service Atlanta, GA

Susan Salka, MBA Retired President and CEO, AMN Healthcare; Independent Director, McKesson Dallas, TX

Sara Shipley Stone, BS ’69 Brooksville, ME

Edwidge J. Thomas, DNP ’05

Vice President of Clinical Solutions, Northwell Holdings and Ventures New York, NY

Jasmine L. Travers, PhD ’16

Assistant Professor, New York University

Rory Meyers College of Nursing New York, NY

Spring 2025 Contents

4 28 24

The Pulse: Columbia Nursing News

· Policy Brief Assignment Gives Rise to New Collaboration

· Honoring Six Decades of Excellence

· Biased Birthing Language Is Common in Electronic Health Records

· NPs Key to Expanding Primary Care Access

· Columbia Nursing to Award First DNPs in Nurse Anesthesia in 2025

· Palliative Care Knowledge Lags in Home Care

Selected Faculty Publications Alumni

· Take Five with the Alumni Association Board President

· A Glimpse of Alumni Events Throughout the Year

· Class Notes

· In Memoriam

Please address all correspondence to: press_nursing@cumc.columbia.edu

Alumni are invited to update their contact information by emailing sonalumni@columbia.edu or calling 212-305-5999

Subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter: nursing.columbia.edu

Like us on Facebook: @ColumbiaNursing

Subscribe to us on YouTube: Columbia University School of Nursing

Advancing AI

By Andrea Kott, MPH

Columbia Nursing students are in the vanguard of the national conversation about artificial intelligence in nursing.

20 A Global Village

In rural and urban settings alike, the Global Student Clinical Program gives students exposure to the profession in resource-challenged countries.

14 Taking the Initiative

By Kenneth Miller

Columbia Nursing’s Quality Improvement Practicum helps students become better nurses —and nursing leaders.

The Pulse

T Policy Brief Assignment Gives Rise to New Collaboration

hree Columbia Nursing students are working with the New York City Mayor’s Office of Food Policy (MOFP) to put an innovative plan for addressing food insecurity into action, just a few months after they started brainstorming it as a policy brief for a class.

Hannah Apostol, Jonathon Kitchens, and Chanwoo “CJ” Jang— students in Columbia’s Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Program—have proposed an interim solution to bring fresh, healthy food to eligible New Yorkers living in food deserts: subsidized grocery deliveries.

Along with Lisa Iannacci-Manasia, MS ’89, a pediatric nurse practitioner and the faculty member who teaches the Health and Social Policy course, the students met in December with MOFP Policy Advisor Lauren Drumgold. They plan to meet again in 2025.

FOCUS ON FOOD DESERTS

Health and Social Policy, a first-semester requirement for DNP students, prepares advanced-level providers to develop policies to promote health equity across policy sectors. Working in small groups, students analyze a problem, develop a solution, and present a brief to the target audience with their recommendations for change.

Apostol and Kitchens, who are in the Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) Program, joined forces with Jang, who is in the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Program, and focused on food deserts in New York City. They decided to recommend supplementing an existing program run through the city, Food Retain to Support Health (FRESH), which supports the construction of dozens of grocery stores in historically underserved neighborhoods.

People who live in food deserts have limited access to fresh foods, increasing their reliance on less healthy processed foods that are often more readily available.

“We were proposing, ‘OK, in the time that it takes to get a grocery store, people still need to eat,’” Kitchens says. The team designed a streamlined system in which people with benefits could use their card each month to order from farther-away grocery stores, which would then deliver to a central neighborhood location.

MEETING WITH THE MAYOR’S OFFICE

As they worked on their proposal, Kitchens reached out to the MOFP through an online form. Within three days, Drumgold got in touch. “She was very interested in speaking with us about our process and what we had come up with,” says Kitchens. The students

Lauren Drumgold of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Food Policy (second from the left) met in December with four representatives of Columbia Nursing: students Hannah Apostol (left), Jonathon Kitchens (center), and Chanwoo Jang (second from the right) and faculty member Lisa Iannacci-Manasia (right).

met with Drumgold on Zoom and had a second Zoom meeting with Drumgold and Iannacci-Manasia, eventually leading to December’s in-person meeting with Drumgold.

While their Health and Social Policy class has ended, Apostol, Kitchens, and Jang are excited to keep working with the Mayor’s Office to develop their proposal and build a relationship between Columbia Nursing and the MOFP.

“It was definitely surreal for the three of us to be taking our picture in front of the Mayor’s Office, having been officially asked to come and speak with a representative of the office,” Kitchens says. “That was pretty amazing.”

HELPING PATIENTS ACCESS RESOURCES

The students’ commitment to the project is more than an academic exercise. Kitchens experienced food and housing insecurity himself while growing up and witnessed the effects of food insecurity on patients during his work as an emergency and critical medicine nurse.

Honoring Six Decades of Excellence

Just as 2024 came to a close, the Alpha Zeta chapter of Sigma Theta Tau International gathered at Columbia Nursing to celebrate its 60th anniversary and the December holidays.

Amy Staley, MS ’24, a patient care director at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital who was inducted into to the Alpha Zeta chapter of Sigma as a student at Columbia Nursing, helped organize and attended the event and was recently elected one of nine Sigma Youth Representatives to the United Nations.

“I’ll be representing Sigma by promoting leadership and elevating the voices of nurses at events hosted by the United Nations, such as the General Assembly each fall,” Staley explains. “I’ll be advocating for the nursing profession, influencing policy change, and seeking out ways to bring the voices of nurses to the table in these global spaces.”

Penelope Buschman, BS ’64, DNP ’04, now a professor emerita, helped found Alpha Zeta at Columbia Nursing in 1964 and is still active in the chapter. Along with its parent organization—the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing—the chapter aims to develop nurse leaders to improve health care everywhere, offering professional

“It’s always been something, as far as going into practice, that I wanted to tackle with my patients,” he says. Those new to the system face many challenges to getting help, or even being aware of these resources, let alone understanding what they qualify for based on where they live, their income, and changes in income status. “Then on top of that there is the psychological impact of being food insecure, and you feel so helpless,” Kitchens adds.

His goal as an FNP, he says, will be to connect his patients with the resources they need to access healthy food and other assistance related to social determinants of health. His classmates have the same goal for their future work.

Helping patients to address food insecurity by pointing them toward the right resources “doesn’t take any time at all,” Kitchens says. “There’s no skin off my back, and you can really help somebody—not just in their life, but also to develop a trusting relationship with their provider, showing that they care about them and their well-being and health. Only good can come of that.”

development focused on education, leadership, career development, evidence-based nursing, research, and scholarship. Members also staff local health events and collect donations for the community.

Sigma has more than 100,000 members in 600 chapters worldwide, while the Alpha Zeta chapter has more than 400 members around the globe.

Columbia Nursing’s Alpha Zeta chapter is among the largest in the organization. “We as a chapter are extremely grateful for our founding members, such as Penny Buschman, for starting the chapter and providing all of us the opportunity to be a part of this great organization,” says Karol DiBello, DNP, an associate professor of nursing at CUMC and current chapter president. “It’s an honor to be a part of it, and particularly part of something that’s been going so long and so strong.”

In 2024, DiBello notes, the Columbia Nursing chapter helped send three PhD students to the Sigma Rising Star Conference in Singapore. The chapter also provided financial support to its active members with scholarships and research grants, held several educational events, and inducted 102 new student and nurse leader members.

Yolanda Stevenson, MS ’23, pediatric complex care manager at NewYork-Presbyterian/ Weill Cornell Medical Center, gave the student address at the 2024 ceremony. She encouraged inductees to get involved in the various initiatives that the chapter offers to grow as a member.

“You will find leadership that will challenge you to move beyond your comfort zone,” Stevenson said. “Don’t be afraid to step up and follow through.”

Several dozen members of Columbia Nursing’s Alpha Zeta chapter of Sigma Theta Tau gathered in December to celebrate the chapter’s 60th anniversary.

Biased Birthing Language Is Common in Electronic Health Records

Language that conveys stigma is common in clinicians’ notes on laboring and birthing, a recent study from Columbia Nursing found.

The study, by Assistant Professor Veronica Barcelona, PhD, and colleagues, appeared in a special issue of the Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing focused on women’s mental health across the life course.

The authors noted that previous studies have shown that Black patients’ medical records are more likely to contain biased language than white patients’ records, a discrepancy that could contribute to worse health care. They added that while implicit bias and racism are known contributors to worse perinatal outcomes among Black people, to date most research on clinicians’ use of stigmatizing language has been in non-maternity settings.

To better understand bias in medical records for birthing patients, Barcelona and her colleagues analyzed 1,771 clinical and labor birthing notes from 2017 at two large hospitals, identifying 10 categories of stigmatizing and non-stigmatizing language.

The most common category of stigmatizing language was unjustified descriptions of social and behavioral risks—for example, referring to suspected or actual substance use, domestic violence, or teen pregnancy; such instances were identified in 22.4% of the notes. In addition, patients were called difficult in 7.2% of notes.

Other stigmatizing categories that occurred less frequently included language indicating unilateral, authoritarian decision-making (4.0%), questioning patient credibility (2.9%), or indicating clinician disapproval (1.1%).

The authors defined two categories of non-stigmatizing language: positive or preferred language—for example, using words like “endorses” or “reports” to convey a patient’s point of view—which was identified in 10.8% of the notes; and language indicating that patients were exercising autonomy regarding the birth, identified in 0.8% of the notes. In addition, 5.2% included “power” or “privilege” language—for example, mentioning a patient’s husband’s job at a prominent financial institution.

“Implications of this work extend beyond the research context,” Barcelona and her colleagues wrote. “We aim to improve clinical documentation that reflects each person’s autonomy, is patient-centered, and demonstrates respect to achieve the ultimate goal of developing more inclusive and equitable health care practices for all in the perinatal period.”

Barcelona’s Columbia Nursing co-authors included postdoctoral associate Jihye Scroggins, PhD; doctoral students Danielle Scharp, MS, PhD ’24; and Sarah Harkins, BS; and Maxim Topaz, PhD, the Elizabeth Standish Gill Associate Professor of Nursing.

The study was funded by grants from the Columbia University Data Science Institute Seed Funds Program and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

NPs Key to Expanding Primary Care Access

Primary care practices that employ nurse practitioners (NPs) are more likely to serve socioeconomically disadvantaged communities than practices with no NPs on staff, Columbia University School of Nursing researchers reported in JAMA Network Open.

Assistant Professor Monica O’Reilly-Jacob, PhD, led the study, published online on February 28.

To better understand the distribution of NPs—who are increasingly critical to improving access to primary care—O’Reilly-Jacob and her colleagues looked at 79,743 primary care practices across the U.S., 53.4% of which employed NPs in 2023. The authors note that this is a big jump from 2012, when 21% of primary care practices employed NPs.

Practices with NPs were more likely to be based in lowincome (23.3% vs. 17.2%) and rural (11.9% vs. 5.5%) areas, the researchers found. Communities where primary care practices employed NPs had more people living below the poverty level (14.4% vs. 12.8%) and more people without high school diplomas (19.8% vs. 18.5%).

“This study demonstrates that NPs are increasingly utilized for primary care delivery across the country, and especially within low-socioeconomic communities,” O’Reilly-Jacob and her colleagues note. “This is important as fewer medical residents are choosing to practice primary care, resulting in an estimated shortfall of 20,200–40,400 primary care physicians by 2036.”

Policies are also needed to bring NPs to underserved areas, and retain them, the researchers add, “such as strengthening federal and state loan repayment programs, establishing pay parity in state Medicaid programs, and ensuring primary care provider designation for NPs across payers. Such steps would expand the capacity of the primary care system to better meet demand in communities where it is needed most.”

The study was funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research.

JÖRG MEYER

Veronica Barcelona, PhD

Practices that employ NPs were the focus of a recent study.

Columbia Nursing to Award First DNPs in Nurse Anesthesia in 2025

The first cohort of students in Columbia Nursing’s Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) in Nurse Anesthesia Program is graduating this year.

Recognizing the vital role of certified registered nurse anesthetists/anesthesiologists (CRNAs) in advanced practice nursing, the school launched its nurse anesthesia DNP in 2021. Until this year, the program granted MS degrees.

“As expert leaders in the specialty of anesthesiology, CRNAs must be educated in all of the elements that influence the quality, accessibility, and cost-effectiveness and efficiency of health care delivery,” Program Director Maribeth Massie, PhD, MS ’98, said at the time. “That is the role that the DNP program plays: advanced education in leadership, quality improvement, health care informatics, health care policy, and translational research.”

Massie leads the program with Associate Director Don Boyd, PhD ’17, MS ’06, an associate professor of nursing at CUMC.

The students will receive their degrees in May 2025.

Palliative Care Knowledge Lags in Home Care

Many home health care (HHC) clinicians, patients, and caregivers lack knowledge about palliative care, according to Columbia Nursing research recently published in the journal Home Healthcare Now

Misconceptions about palliative care—a patient- and family-centered approach to symptom management for people with serious illness—are common, noted the paper’s authors, led by Ashley Chastain, DrPH, senior project director of Columbia Nursing’s Center for Health Policy. Palliative care services are often confused with hospice or end-of-life care, but they can be provided at any stage of illness. Many HHC patients could benefit from home-based palliative care, the authors add, but just a fraction of HHC agencies provide these services.

The authors developed a questionnaire encompassing all eight domains of the National Consensus Project’s Clinical Practice Guidelines for Quality Palliative Care, then pilot-tested it with 35 clinicians and 31 patients or caregivers from an HHC agency in the Northeast.

Among the clinicians, 37% had provided hospice and/or palliative services in the past, while 46% had received palliative care training. However, 45% answered questions about pain management incorrectly—for example, agreeing that addiction is a major issue with long-term morphine use and that regular use of opioids often causes respiratory depression. There were also significant knowledge gaps in ethical and legal aspects of palliative care, like medical decisionmaking and health care proxies.

Nevertheless, all clinicians surveyed agreed that patients with serious illness have the right to receive palliative care, and 97% said educating clinicians on palliative care is important.

Nearly half of the patients and caregivers surveyed had never heard of palliative care, and only 13% had “sufficient” knowledge of it. Many had gaps in their knowledge of pain management and opioid use, as well as ethical and legal aspects of palliative care. However, 94% agreed or strongly agreed that they would consider palliative care for themselves or their loved ones facing a serious illness.

“Given the demonstrated willingness of patients and caregivers to engage with palliative care, policies that promote awareness and education about these services are essential,” Chastain and her colleagues concluded.

Other Columbia Nursing authors of the paper included Professor of Nursing Jingjing Shang, PhD; Jung Kang, PhD ’24; and Professor of Data Science Yihong Zhao, PhD.

Students in the new Doctor of Nursing Practice in Nurse Anesthesia Program catch some sun and city views.

ADVANCING

Columbia Nursing students are in the vanguard of the national conversation about artificial intelligence in nursing.

Daniella Topol, MS ’24, knew she faced a steep learning curve when she decided to enter Columbia Nursing’s Masters Direct Entry (MDE) program in 2023. Not only had she spent the previous 25 years as a creative director in the theater world, but she hadn’t taken a science course since high school. Moreover, she had no knowledge of generative artificial intelligence (AI), a tool that clinicians increasingly use. “I had to ask my 10-year-old daughter to show me how to use ChatGPT,” Topol says with a chuckle.

AI

Jörg Meyer

But today, as a student in the school’s Family Nurse Practitioner Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) Program, Topol uses ChatGPT regularly to test herself on material in her courses. She also sits on Columbia Nursing’s Student Advisory Council (SAC) on AI, helping to educate her classmates and others in the school community about the potential advances—and risks—that this emerging technology brings to the field. “I’m learning about AI for the first time, so playing a role in some small way with other students to explore what’s possible when integrating it into nursing education is really thrilling,” she says.

The establishment of the SAC came soon after the creation of the school’s Office of AI (OAI) in July 2024. Stephen Ferrara, DNP, a professor of nursing and the school’s associate dean of AI, directs the OAI and leads its efforts to familiarize students, faculty, and staff with the technology. “I’m working with students and faculty to help them understand

AI as a tool that can be used in the classroom or the simulation lab and how we can deploy it in health care in a meaningful way,” says Ferrara. Members of the SAC range from students with no prior experience in nursing to doctoral candidates. Together, they work to raise community awareness of AI; discuss its impact on students’ educational, research, and clinical experiences; and invite their peers to share their concerns about the technology. “We’re helping to represent students and move the conversation forward,” Topol says. The SAC has already held an informational town hall, an AI arcade, and a poster presentation to introduce students and nurses to the technology and also conducted a follow-up survey. “There is a lot of curiosity about integrating AI into nursing education and practice,” Topol says, including “how we harness it and what are its blind spots.” “For members of the SAC to be a resource for other students and members of the nursing community is key,” she adds.

By Andrea Kott, MPH

WHAT IS AI?

IBM, the multinational technology company, defines AI as “technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity, and autonomy.” It does this by collecting and processing massive amounts of data to create software algorithms that analyze and generate information.

“Generative AI, like ChatGPT, has consumed every article that’s out there and uses it as an algorithm to

Photographs

predict what text you want it to give you in response to the questions you ask,” Ferrara says. “You put in a prompt, and it gives you an answer, or it predicts what should be written next in response to the question or information you type in.”

As a health care tool, AI is trained to extract and analyze large quantities of data from sources like patients’ electronic health records (EHRs), including descriptions of symptoms, lab findings, imaging results, or vital signs. It processes this data to detect unusual and potentially significant patterns or risks that clinicians might miss, like a patient’s risk of falling or deteriorating. Yet its capacity to predict patient outcomes is still experimental. “It’s very much emerging and not ready for prime time,” Ferrara notes.

One form of generative AI with practical bedside use that has emerged is the so-called “virtual scribe,” which records and transcribes patient-nurse conversations and then extracts important information from them. This spares nurses from having to continually return to their computers to write down the

“AI will allow us to be more present and spend more time with our patients because we don’t have to spend all the time doing busywork.” Stephen Ferrara

details of every patient interaction. “A lot of what we do in health care is documentation—filling out forms or other things that take up time but don’t have direct impact on patients,” Ferrara says. “AI will allow us to be more present and spend more time with our patients because we don’t have to spend all the time doing busywork. If we can find ways to better care for our patients, then that’s something we want to be researching and using.”

A TOOL FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING

These days, Columbia Nursing’s focus is on using AI as a teaching and learning tool, which it is beginning to integrate into its curriculum, says Mary Hickey, EdD, the vice dean of education and a professor of nursing. “Clinical applications of AI are continuing to evolve,” Hickey says. “It is being used to review images and scans, and aid in diagnosis. Although its full potential to improve patient outcomes has not been realized, we plan to integrate its clinical application into the curriculum as we learn more.”

Meanwhile, students and faculty are gradually integrating AI, largely ChatGPT and other generative or large language models, into nursing education. For instance, some faculty members use it to help students learn content, interpret symptoms, create care plans, or improve writing skills. Some faculty are using AI to generate case scenarios. “Our Simulation Center has piloted virtual reality for skill building in some advanced practice RN programs,” Hickey says. “Students need to know how AI can help them make differential diagnoses, analyze reports, or interpret computer-generated analyses of scans.”

Students’ familiarity with the technology varies. For example, MDE student Pawel Maslag arrived at Columbia Nursing fluent in the basics of ChatGPT. He now uses it to better understand the material in his courses and to study by creating practice quizzes with questions. A longtime social activist and tutor, Maslag volunteered for nonprofits like AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, and the U.S. Fund for UNICEF before enrolling in nursing school. He also launched an AI social impact lab to teach neighbors in his New Jersey community how to use the technology in their daily lives. Now a member of the SAC, Maslag—who earned his undergraduate degree in sociology from Columbia University in 2018—is eager to use his AI expertise and tutoring skills to help his current classmates. “I hope to bring my enthusiasm for AI literacy to the SAC, so I can advocate to make AI part of our curriculum,” he says.

Topol, who is working per diem as a registered nurse (RN) while earning her doctorate, also uses AI as a study aid. “I’ll ask it to give me a scenario where a patient has an abdominal issue so I can explore various diagnoses and treatments,” she says. She also hopes that AI will help her navigate the numerous databases, like PubMed, that can be used to research clinical questions. “I’m always wondering, ‘Do I go to this or that app?’” she says. “As a new RN and emerging provider, I don’t want to miss anything.”

PhD student Jiaojiao Wright, MS, calls generative AI a “mind-blowing” educational tool that has helped her grasp statistics in her doctoral studies. Born and raised in Hebi City, China, Wright earned a degree in English literature and linguistics in 2013 to pursue her goal of becoming a medical interpreter. After emigrating to the United States with her husband, she earned her master’s degree in nursing and began working as an RN for a hos-

pital in lower Manhattan during the COVID pandemic. “The area has a huge Chinese population, and I saw so much inequity for people who don’t speak English, especially in the emergency room,” she says. To address this inequity, Wright devised a communication card system, featuring pictures that illustrated common phrases like, “I need… [the bathroom, water, a blanket],” to help Chinesespeaking patients and English-speaking providers communicate with each other.

The project earned her a grant for further study and led to a poster she presented in April at the 2025 annual scientific sessions of the Eastern Nursing Research Society. It also inspired her to pursue a career in nursing research.

As part of her doctoral work, Wright plans to use AI to enhance her communication card system. She already uses the technology to help her understand statistics. “Our statistics class is remote, so we can’t always get answers to our questions instantly,” she says. “But if I ask ChatGPT ‘What is a P value?’ it gives the answer right away and makes it simple. It can also explain logically and scientifically what a type 1 or type 2 error is. It is an important tool in my education.”

Because AI is evolving so quickly, it is imperative for all its users to understand its changes and implement strategic initiatives to ensure its meaningful adoption, Ferrara says. “We see AI being interwoven throughout the school to strengthen what Columbia does best: educate future nurses, deliver excellence in practice, and support worldclass research.”

AI IN RESEARCH

In fact, Columbia’s entry into the world of AI is not brand new. The school has been training doctoral and postdoctoral research students in computational applications, under the rubric of informatics, for nearly a quarter of a century. It is thus the leading nursing school in the area of AI research in the world, according to Suzanne Bakken, PhD, vice dean for research, the alumni professor of nursing, and a professor of biomedical informatics. “For us, AI is not a method to help us do research, it is the focus of the research,” Bakken says. “We have been training PhDs and postdocs in AI for 23 years. It is why we ranked first in the bibliometric analysis of 2000-24.”

Columbia’s AI-related research features explorations of the predictive ability of the technology to improve patient outcomes. For example, one

study is looking at the effectiveness of an AI tool that uses recorded communication between nurses and patients to identify high-risk patients during hospital-to-homecare transitions. Another is analyzing whether AI-recorded voices and speech are better than text at predicting whether patients have subtle cognitive deficits signaling the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and related types of dementia.

Sergine Delma, a student in the Family Nurse Practitioner DNP Program, is exploring yet another predictive application of AI: its potential to anticipate in primary care settings the progression of type 2 diabetes mellitus and comorbidities associated with the disease; use patient-specific data to personalize treatment plans; and use voice-based conversational AI to support self-management. “AI has been shown to help manage type 2 diabetes by reminding patients to check their insulin and blood sugars,” says Delma. “These tools can act as powerful equalizers when used thoughtfully, by not only enhancing clinical decision-making but also addressing disparities in care, particularly for underserved populations.” Her research poster,

SERGINE DELMA, BS

ADVANCINGAI

produced in collaboration with Adelina Ailarov, MS ’23, and Vicky Chen, MS ’23, will be presented at the 36th International Nursing Research Congress this summer.

An immigrant from Haiti, where people commonly lack access to health care, Delma has long been passionate about health care equity. Her interest in reducing disparities—and engaging in research, community service, and advocacy— brought her to Kisumu, Kenya, where she volunteered as a clinical nurse practitioner; Los Angeles and Mexico, where she advocated for immigrant rights; and the global nonprofit Partners in Health, which she joined to advocate for legislation eliminating barriers to care. Now, her passion is driving her in her pursuit of a doctoral degree as an advanced practice nurse.

Through her research, Delma has found that predictive AI models can identify and allow for early interventions in at-risk patients by analyzing subtle patterns in their data. This is especially helpful for underserved populations who often lack access to consistent care, she says. “AI tools like conversational assistants can help patients manage their diabetes by guiding them through complex tasks like insulin adjustments, even when their health literacy or access to specialists is limited,” she says.

Additionally, AI-powered remote monitoring devices can extend high-quality care to rural or resource-limited areas, ensuring that patients receive timely interventions. “These innovations address key barriers, such as gaps in communication and access to resources and biases in care delivery,” Delma says. “AI’s true potential lies in its ability to make health care more efficient, accessible, and equitable for everyone.”

CONCERNS ABOUT DISPARITIES AND OTHER POTENTIAL DOWNSIDES

When she arrived at Columbia, Delma had limited knowledge of generative AI. The more she learned, the more interested she became in the need for regulations and policies to protect data privacy and to avoid algorithm bias that can amplify rather than diminish health care disparities. “If Black patients are hesitant about going to the doctor or being part of certain studies, then they are not providing the type of data that AI’s predictive abilities need to perform well for their community,” she points out. “If there’s bias in our data or health care practice, then AI is going to reproduce that bias,” she adds.

Such bias has skewed skin cancer studies, for example, which historically have lacked data from Black populations and thus produced outcomes disproportionately benefiting white patients, Wright says. “AI learns what you teach it. If you teach it biased information, then it will be a biased machine.”

Bakken underscores the importance of learning how to recognize this pitfall. “Clinical students must know how to assess algorithms and their potential biases,” she says. They also must refrain from viewing AI as a gold standard, she adds. “People need to be thoughtful about AI’s use,” she says. “We can’t accept its findings at face value. AI is a triad of clinical expertise, patients’ lived experience, and what algorithms might tell you about patients who are at risk for certain diseases. It’s just another tool.” What’s more, she adds, “there must be a human component to it.”

JIAOJIAO WRIGHT, MS

NO REPLACEMENT FOR HUMAN TOUCH OR LEARNING

What concerns many about AI is its potential to replace the human component in nursing care. “AI is never going to replace human interaction,” Hickey says. “It can’t sit at the bedside with a patient and hold their hand. It can’t sit next to the parent of a sick child or give them kindness, empathy, and compassion.”

Topol and Delma agree. “AI isn’t taking over who we are and how we approach our practice,” Topol says. Adds Delma, “AI is really meant to augment our role as clinicians but not replace the human aspect of health care. We want to use it to enhance our practice and diagnostic skills but not replace the compassion and empathy that nurses are known to provide.”

Other concerns about AI include patient data breaches and the need for academic guidelines. “As a student, I’ve found AI to be very overwhelming,” Maslag notes, citing his uncertainty about the rules, regulations, and ethics of using it. “Some professors will use AI to create quizzes for us to use in class,” he says, “while others will not allow us to use it for our own studying.”

Delma cautions that “reckless use” of AI could undermine students’ education. “Students could use AI in ways that are not in alignment with their learning, as a quick way to get answers without digesting what’s being taught,” she says. “If schools aren’t ahead in creating AI guidelines or policies of use, then we’re doing a disservice to students,” she says, pointing to personalized study plans that AI can create, and simulated patient encounters that it can facilitate. “Asking AI to correct your grammar is okay but asking it to do the work for you is not doing your due diligence and is setting yourself up for failure,” she says.

A TOOL FOR THE FUTURE

In addition, as students learn to navigate AI themselves, they must embrace their responsibility as emerging providers to teach patients how to use it. “Patients are going to use AI by asking Google questions like ‘What is diverticulitis?’ without knowing how to interpret the answers,” Hickey says. “We need to convey to students the importance of making sure patients understand the benefits and limitations of what AI can tell them.”

Indeed, there is much to learn about AI’s positive and negative impacts on students’ experiences in the classroom and, later, at the beside. “It will be important for us as nurses to understand AI so

“AI is never going to replace human interaction. It can’t sit at the bedside with a patient and hold their hand. It can’t sit next to the parent of a sick child.” Mary Hickey

we can help patients understand it—because that’s where the future of health care is heading,” Maslag says. As applications for AI in health care expand, nurses will need to have a say in its use, he says. “The SAC can provide guidance to the school as to the best ways to advance the role of nurses in the implementation of AI in our field,” he observes. Says Delma, “By prioritizing our voices, the OAI is empowering us to become leaders when it comes to introducing AI into health care, addressing ethical issues like health disparities [and] making sure we’re involved in the development of curriculum, research, and policy, as well as the optimization and management of AI tools,” she says. “As emerging nurses, we must have an impact on the tools that we’ll be using.” 

DANIELLA TOPOL, MS ’24

HOW COLUMBIA NURSING’S QUALITY IMPROVEMENT PRACTICUM HELPS STUDENTS BECOME BETTER NURSES—AND NURSING LEADERS.

O INITIATIVE THE TAKING

BY KENNETH MILLER

f all the lessons that Scarling Perez, MS ’24, learned at Columbia University School of Nursing, some of the most surprising came when she was assigned to assess practicing nurses’ knowledge and compliance in the realm of nursing care and patient safety. Those revelations arrived during her final semester in the Masters Direct Entry (MDE) program, in a course known as the Quality Improvement Practicum.

Launched two years ago by Assistant Professor Candice Ann Smith, DNP, the practicum introduces students to the theory and practice of strategic hospital-based quality improvement (QI) initiatives. During the on-site portion of the 10-week course, students support a range of efforts to enhance nursing-sensitive quality outcomes and patient safety initiatives at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (NYP).

Perez participated in a drive to improve prevention of the often-intractable hospital-based infection Clostridioides difficile (C. diff). Prior to conducting their observations, she and her fellow students were educated about the hospital’s process requirements to prevent C. diff, data collection methods, NYP’s QI tool (a survey containing standardized questions based on best practices), criteria for scoring their observations, and how to pro-

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ZACK GARLITOS

Shamier Green (left) and Lydia Steenman (right), both MS ’24, go through the C. diff protocol during their QI Practicum.

vide feedback to clinical nurses and nurse leaders. Then every Tuesday for 10 weeks, Perez spent the morning on NYP/Allen Hospital’s ICU, using a hospital-approved third-party app to collect de-identified data from patients, staff members, and visitors. During each session, she provided the unit’s leaders and frontline staff with real-time feedback on her findings. “Our main task,” Perez recalls, “besides checking patient rooms for instructional signage and chlorhexidine soap, was to ask anyone we saw on the unit what they knew about preventing C. diff.” She and her classmates would use prompts from the app to ask questions, score the responses, and provide educational opportunities when appropriate.

NYP is a national leader in patient quality and safety, holding a five-star rating from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—and one reason for that is the health system’s commitment to engaging

frontline clinical nurses, support staff, and nurse leaders in the development and implementation of QI initiatives. The hospital’s compliance rates for infection prevention measures consistently exceed 95%, for example, and its C. diff rates outperform national benchmarks. Yet even so, NYP continually evaluates its performance so strengths can be enhanced and process gaps addressed. The QI Practicum is one among many aspects of that continual monitoring. Perez came away from the course with a better appreciation for the role of nurses in providing quality care and for the impact of nursing care on overall performance and outcomes.

As part of the QI Practicum, nursing students also have a chance to hone their communication skills by reporting to nurse leaders on opportunities for improvement. One example Perez encountered was in the use of personal protective equipment (PPE). A key intervention to prevent the spread of infection is following explicit steps for removal of contaminated PPE. As part of the practicum, Perez learned the proper sequence of steps: “You’re supposed to remove your gloves first,” she explains, “throw them away, then grab your gown from the inside to rip it off. Then you fold it inside out and toss it in the garbage.” But although the steps may sound straightforward, the fast-paced, complex clinical environment can all too often pose distractions that impact adherence to best practices.

This, she adds, highlighted another key lesson of her QI experience: the fact that ongoing reinforcement of best practices is essential to ensuring compliance in a fast-paced care environment. During her clinical rotations, she’d seen how difficult it could be for nurses to stay on schedule while juggling multiple patients who needed medication or monitoring at precise intervals. Once, a nurse she was shadowing had to spend at least 20 minutes calming a patient’s family members when they panicked after an IV alarm began beeping by the patient’s bed—since part of an RN’s role, in addition to delivering care, is to take the time to address patient and family concerns.

Given the competing demands on nurses’ attention, Perez understood why some might lose focus on C. diff control procedures. Her experience in the QI Practicum made her wonder: “When I become a practicing nurse, how can I make sure to stay on top of the details? And how can hospitals help all nurses stay focused on the little things that play a big role in keeping patients safe?”

Getting students to ponder such puzzles was one of Smith’s central purposes in designing the course. The other was to encourage them to seek solutions. “The goal,” she says, “is to produce not only better nurses but better nurse leaders—and, ultimately, to improve the quality of patient care wherever their careers take them.”

SCARLING PEREZ, MS ’24 JÖRG

A GROUNDBREAKING PROJECT

Although other nursing schools offer QI-focused courses for graduate nurses, Columbia Nursing’s practicum is the only one geared to students at the prelicensure stage. The idea was born in 2021, when Smith took over teaching the school’s long-running Leadership and Management course. “I wanted to emphasize students’ awareness of quality and safety beyond just the bedside,” she says, “extending it to how leadership and management track data and meet compliance.”

To further that aim, Smith designed a course unit centered on QI. Her concept was inspired partly by the American Academy of Nursing’s just-released “AACN Essentials,” a set of 10 core competencies for nursing curricula. By participating in a real-life quality improvement initiative, she reasoned, students could also enhance their skills in the other domains that the AACN had identified, including systems-based practice, informatics and health care technologies, patient-centered care, nursing scholarship, and professional and leadership development.

Smith developed the project in partnership with NYP’s patient quality and safety team. Students were assigned to support a single initiative: improving C. diff prevention. Some rounded in the hospital, using tracers like those that NYP’s own quality auditors employed; others worked behind the scenes, doing research and literature reviews. Then both groups joined forces to create posters—similar to those produced for nursing conferences and symposia—reporting their findings and proposing innovative ways to boost staff education and patient care.

“The response was fantastic,” Smith recalls. “The hospital was impressed with the students’ competence and the reliability of their data, and they were thrilled to have extra boots on the ground to do surveillance.” When she suggested launching a standalone practicum on QI for all senior Columbia Nursing students, NYP administrators embraced the notion wholeheartedly.

“This project wouldn’t have been possible without the ongoing collaboration of the NewYork-Presbyterian team,” she adds. “This course highlights their dedication to patient safety, and to developing nurses who are committed to enhancing it.”

The practicum debuted in the summer of 2022 and has followed the same basic format ever since. It begins with a classroom component, led by Assistant Professor Ashley Graham-Perel, EdD. After a few days, the lessons move to the school’s simulation center, where the students—typically about 200—practice in replicas of patients’ rooms, using task trainers, mannequins, and actual hospital equipment. Led by Smith and an assortment of clinical instructors and NYP nurses, they learn

“ The hospital was impressed with the students’ competence and the reliability of their data.” — Candice Ann Smith

how to handle tracers, audit the care environment, and elicit participation from survey subjects.

From weeks three to eight, the students are deployed to over 50 units at all six NYP hospitals, where they assist in QI initiatives to prevent C. diff infections, central line-associated blood stream infections (CLABSIs), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), and—starting with this summer’s session—inpatient falls. They then spend two weeks analyzing their data and preparing their research posters. Finally, they present their findings at the school-wide nursing symposium held every August, which affiliate partners and nursing colleagues are invited to attend.

“The practicum instills values and behaviors that help ensure students will always put patient safety first,” Smith says, “no matter what the clinical environment throws at them.” On a more bread-and-butter level, it

CANDICE ANN SMITH, DNP

inculcates skills that can lead to career opportunities. “I’ve heard many students say they didn’t realize quality and regulatory matters were possible career paths for nurses,” says NYP Manager-Business Administration for Quality and Patient Safety Keila Soto, who facilitates the hospital’s involvement with the course. “The practicum teaches them not only to monitor compliance and collect relevant data, but it prepares them to have critical conversations with peers and leadership around patient safety.”

“The benefits run both ways,” adds NYP Director of Nursing Quality Bertha Ku, DNP. “The students bring us a fresh perspective. They notice issues that we sometimes miss, and the ideas in their poster presentations are useful and innovative. I always tell the students, ‘If you’re interested in working here, please join us. You would be the right person to implement your idea because you

understand what’s happening on the unit.’ Several students have taken her up on the invitation.

The practicum also brings even more concrete benefits to NYP. “The students are an amazing resource for us,” says Patient Care Director Rochelle Ibe, MS ’21, who has sometimes served as a clinical instructor for the practicum. “We’ve seen a 31% decrease in falls since last year, and a week-to-week improvement in falls education compliance while they were doing their audit. At least in part, those numbers represent tangible outcomes of their participation.”

The course could have a broader impact, as well, Ibe observes—especially if other nursing schools adopt a similar model. “Immersing students in quality improvement helps them appreciate its importance to the profession. And that could inspire them to make contributions that improve health care at a larger scale.”

Under the watchful eye of Ebony Rodriguez (left), a clinical instructor at New-York Presbyterian, Katherine Zhao, MS ’24, administers a fall-prevention questionnaire during her QI Practicum.

BRINGING NEW INSIGHTS TO STUDENTS— AND TO THE PROFESSION

For Katherine Zhao, MS ’24, the QI Practicum opened a new perspective on her chosen profession. Raised by two physicians in Southern California, Zhao recognized her calling when her father suffered a medical crisis and a crew of diligent nurses in a surgical intensive care unit saved his life. An interest in global health brought her to Columbia Nursing, and she completed her clinical integration at the school’s affiliated center in Amman, Jordan. During the practicum, however, she gained insights that only an immersion in QI could have afforded her.

Zhao was assigned to support a fall-prevention initiative at NYP/Allen Hospital, at the northern tip of Manhattan. “I hadn’t had the experience of collecting data on a hospital unit before, so it was very rewarding,” she says.

It was also eye-opening. She and her classmates reviewed electronic medical records to see if documentation on high–fall-risk patients met clinical standards and had been properly updated. They inspected patients’ rooms to see if the environment was safe, checking for hazards such as loose wires, water on the floor, or missing bed rails. They checked that the fall-prevention sheets in those rooms were up-to-date and matched the data in the occupants’ electronic medical records.

In addition, they spoke with the patients themselves, asking a battery of questions: Did the nurse go over your fall-risk profile with you? Do you remember receiving any fall-prevention education? Can you recite some of the preventive steps you can take? They surveyed patients’ family members, too, asking similar questions. And they interviewed the unit’s nurses.

Like Scarling Perez, Zhao found them to be knowledgeable and helpful. “They knew whether patients had had a fall or not,” she recalls. “They knew the risk factors. They knew the prevention protocols.” But although nurses are knowledgeable regarding each individual patient’s fall risk, and they routinely provide patients with educational materials, the patients may not always remember the safety information that they received.

Zhao understood that nurses needed to prioritize their expenditures of time and energy. “You’re doing triage throughout the day,” she says. “You’re never going to get everything 100% perfect. But when I become a working nurse, I want to hold myself to the highest possible standard.”

To help other nurses do just that, Zhao looked for a way to reconnect them with their early training. In the literature review portion of the practicum, she and her partners found studies showing that prevention education significantly reduced the numbers of falls in hospitals. Zhao also remembered a video on pediatric trauma

that she’d seen during her OB rotation, which had been shown to improve outcomes. So, in their research poster, she and her team recommended creating a fallprevention video that nurses could show to patients, reminding both parties of the fundamentals.

“At the poster presentation, an NYP representative told us that they’re working on something similar,” Zhao says. “I’m happy to know that our idea was actually valid and that we were able to contribute to the hospital’s larger fall prevention efforts. But more than that, I’m grateful that the QI Practicum prepared us to approach nursing from a systematic viewpoint—not just for my own sake, but for the profession as a whole.”

“I’m grateful that the QI Practicum prepared us to approach nursing from a systematic viewpoint.” — Katherine Zhao

Perez shares that sentiment. Like Zhao, she was drawn to the profession by her family background; watching her father struggle with diabetes, she’d seen the difference that good nursing made in both his physical and his emotional well-being and in his sense of empowerment as a patient. Perhaps for that reason, the lessons she learned in the QI practicum felt profoundly personal.

“What I loved about the practicum,” Perez says, “was that it drilled down on the most important aspect of nursing: keeping patients safe. It showed me that even the most experienced nurses at the best hospitals can sometimes get things wrong. And it demonstrated that we can always find ways to do things better.” 

Students in the QI Practicum share their findings at an annual school-wide symposium.

MICHAEL DIVITO

A Global Village

In rural and urban settings alike, Columbia Nursing’s Global Student Clinical Program gives students exposure to the profession in resource-challenged countries where the skills and humanity of nursing come to the fore.

“Igot to see basically everything in the textbooks come to life,” said recently graduated MDE Global student Gabriela Mesa Jonassen, MS ’24, of her rotation in Nairobi, Kenya.

“I also practiced more skills than I could have imagined.”

MDE Global students at a local temple

In 2024, Columbia Nursing marked the beginning of the 10th anniversary of its Global Student Clinical Program, with 37 students doing rotations at 11 sites worldwide. Since 2014, over 300 Columbia Nursing students have had their eyes opened to the multitude of ways of delivering care compassionately and equitably worldwide.

They’ve bathed and examined newborns. Coped with a nationwide physician strike. Cared for patients with leprosy. Participated in cultural rituals. Taken part in a naming ceremony for a seven-day-old infant. Helped a first-time mom figure out breastfeeding. Changed dressings on a badly burned child. Learned from supervising nurses and midwives how to transcend resource limitations. All while navigating language barriers.

“By stepping out of my comfort zone,” said Lydia Steenman, MS ’24, another of last year’s MDE Global students, who did a rotation in Turin, Italy, “I interacted with a different health care system based on public health and learned how resources were utilized in innovative ways, which was completely different from my clinical experience in NYC. Their commitment to teaching and fostering a supportive environment demonstrated a unique approach to care that I aspire to incorporate into my own practice.”

That’s exactly what Jennifer Dohrn, DNP ’05, assistant dean of global initiatives, hopes students take away from their global experiences. “The skill and art of nursing practice come to life when students learn from nurses and midwives globally,” she says, “especially in Global South countries where the reality of inequities is tackled every day.”

This feature—drawn from photos submitted to the 2024 Global Photo Contest—offers an armchair view of the rich clinical and cultural opportunities students have been afforded for the past 10 years.

MDE Global studentsattheTajMahal

India

Italy

An MDE Global student and faculty liaison Lisa Iannacci-Manasia at Regina Margherita Children’s Hospital

A visit to the Nyabingi Rastafarian Temple with Heidi Hahn-Schroeder, assistant professor and assistant dean of academic affairs

The Gambia

MDE Global students with Jennifer Dohrn, professor and assistant dean of global initiatives, and Caroline Handschuh, assistant professor

A celebration of the Marathi New Year Jamaica

“In the postpartum ward, I really connected with one of the mothers there. She was a first-time mom, and she was struggling with feeding her baby and just getting her baby to go to sleep. I helped her for the few days that we were on the unit, and at the end, she said, ‘You were my favorite.’ And I said, ‘Oh, my God.’ But I also had to whisper because there were patients nearby, so I said, ‘You were my favorite too.’”

— Mitsy Wedderburn,Jamaica

“During one of the first couple of days, there was a baby that was brought in that had about 20% of his body burned. It ... took three of us to change the dressing, and we had to distract the baby. One was applying saline to try to clean the wounds, and then one of us was trying to rewrap the wrapping. But just really getting in there, trying to move quickly, us not being so familiar with where all the supplies and everything were, and then having a language barrier, we were able to just navigate and work together.... It felt like we were truly coming together like a little family.”

— Arriel Powell, Zambia

Enjoyingthelocal cuisine after clinicals

An informational sessionatasmoking cessation clinic Trinidad

An MDE Global student at Victoria Falls, one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World

Zambia

MDE students with their University of the West Indies ID cards

Publications Selected Faculty

Our faculty’s research continues to create new knowledge that advances health care. Listed are selected articles published by leading peer-reviewed journals.

Suzanne Bakken was among the authors of “User-Centered Design of a PreferenceDriven Patient Activation Tool for Optimizing Depression Treatment in Integrated Primary Care Settings (The Transform DepCare Study),” published in Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Suzanne Bakken; Sergey Kisselev; and Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18, were among the authors of “Advancing Data Science Competencies for Nursing PhD Students,” published in Studies in Health Technology and Informatics.

Veronica Barcelona was among the authors of “Sexual Orientation-Specific Policies Are Associated with Prenatal Care Use in the First Trimester Among Sexual Minority

Women: Results from a Prospective Cohort Study,” published in Annals of Behavioral Medicine

Veronica Barcelona and Maxim Topaz were among the authors of “Applying Natural Language Processing to Understand Symptoms Among Older Adult Home Healthcare Patients with Urinary Incontinence,” published in Journal of Nursing Scholarship, and “Identifying Stigmatizing Language in Clinical Documentation: A Scoping Review of Emerging Literature,” published in PLoS One.

Veronica Barcelona and Yihong Zhao were among the authors of “Associations Between Individual- and Structural-Level Racism and Gestational Age at Birth in the

Nulliparous Pregnancy Outcomes Study: Monitoring Mothers-to-Be,” published in Journal of Urban Health

Melissa Beauchemin, PhD ’19, was among the authors of “Clinical Trial Recruitment of People Who Speak Languages Other Than English: A Children’s Oncology Group Report,” published in JNCI Cancer Spectrum; “Impact of the Children’s Oncology Group’s Supportive Care Clinical Practice Guideline Endorsement Program: An Institutional Survey,” published in Pediatric Blood and Cancer; “Multilevel Challenges to Equitable Inclusion of Children in Trials When Parents Use Languages Other Than English: A Qualitative Report from Children’s Oncology Group’s Diversity and Health Disparities Committee Language Equity Working Group,” published in Pediatric Blood & Cancer; and “Symptom Screening Linked to Care Pathways for Pediatric Patients with Cancer: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” published in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Natalie Benda; student Sarah Harkins; Yihong Zhao; and Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18, were among the authors of “A Cross-Sectional Study of Patient Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence: A Comparison of Somatic Versus Mental Health Care,” published in Journal of General Internal Medicine

Natalie Benda and Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18, were among the authors of “Reach, Acceptability, and Patient Preferences of a Mobile Health-Based Survey to Assess COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Among Patients Receiving Dialysis,” published in Kidney Medicine.

Walter Bockting was among the authors of “Prevalence and Predictors of Cancer Screening in Transgender and Gender Nonbinary Individuals,” published in International Journal of Transgender Health, and “Provider Factors Likely to Impact Access and Uptake of Long-Acting Injectable Cabotegravir for Transgender Women in the United States: Results of a Qualitative Study,” published in Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care.

Laura Britton, MS ’16, and Maureen George were among the authors of “Findings from a Mixed-Methods Journey Map Study of Barriers to Family Planning in Western Kenya,” published in Health Care for Women International.

Jean Marie Bruzzese was the author of “Asthma and Adolescence: Unique Opportunities for Fostering Asthma Self-Management and Asthma Control,” published in Pediatric Allergy, Immunology, and Pulmonology

Billy Caceres; Kasey Jackman, PhD ’17; and Suzanne Bakken were among the authors of “Characterizing Daily Physical Activity Patterns with Unsupervised Learning via Functional Mixture Models,” published in Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

Leon Chen was a co-author of “An Interview with Pennsylvania State Representative Tarik Khan, PhD, FNP-BC,” published in Journal of the American Association of Nurse Prac-

titioners, and among the authors of “A Case Study of Polypharmacy-Induced Serotonin Syndrome in a Cancer Patient,” published in Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners; “Hypoglycemia in Critically Ill Patients: A Concise Clinical Review,” published in Critical Care Nursing Quarterly; and “Penny for Your Thoughts: Crafting an Impactful Opinion Editorial,” published in Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners

Ruth Masterson Creber was among the authors of “Developing an Individualized Patient Decision Aid for Chronic Coronary Disease Based on the ISCHEMIA Trial: A MixedMethods Study,” published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes; “An Evolutionary Concept Analysis of Depression in Black Mothers,” published in Archives of Psychiatric Nursing; “Expanding Revascularization Trials to Women and Underserved Minorities and Shifting to Patient-Centered Outcomes: RECHARGE Trials Program,” published in Current Opinion in Cardiology; “Improving Diversity in Cardiac Surgery Clinical Trials with ROMA: Women as an Exemplar,” published in Current Opinion in Cardiology; and “Should We Routinely Measure Patient Quality of Life After Acute Coronary Syndrome?” published in European Heart Journal: Quality of Care and Clinical Outcomes

Ruth Masterson Creber and Stephanie Niño de Rivera were among the authors of “Minimal Clinically Important Differences in PatientReported Outcomes After Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery in the Arterial Revascularization Trial,” published in European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery.

Christine DeForge, PhD ’23, was among the authors of “Disruptions in Sleep Health and Independent Associations with Psychological Distress in Close Family Members of Cardiac Arrest Survivors: A Prospective Study,” published in Journal of Cardiac Failure, and “Lower Perceived Social Support During Hospitalization by Close Family Members May Have Significant Associations with Psychological Distress 1

Month After Cardiac Arrest,” published in Neurocritical Care

Christine DeForge, PhD ’23; Arlene Smaldone, PhD ’03; and Maureen George were among the authors of “Medical Decision-Making and Bereavement Experiences After Cardiac Arrest: Qualitative Insights from Surrogates,” published in American Journal of Critical Care

Fabiana Dos Santos was among the authors of “Creating Perinatal Nursing Care Plans Using ChatGPT: A Pathway to Improve Nursing Care Plans and Reduce Documentation Burden,” published in Journal of Perinatal and Neonatal Nursing, and “Improving the Quality of Nursing Care Through Standardized Nursing Languages: Call to Action Across European Countries,” published in International Journal of Medical Informatics.

Fabiana Dos Santos and Rebecca Schnall, PhD ’09, were among the authors of “Usability of a Mobile Health Technology for HIV Testing Among Sexual Minorities,” published in Studies in Health Technology and Informatics

Maura Dougherty was among the authors of “The Association Between Alarm Burden and Nurse Burnout in U.S. Hospitals,” published in Nursing Outlook

Safa Elkefi, Corina Lelutiu-Weinberger, JeanMarie Bruzzese, and Phoenix Matthews were the authors of “Disparities in Exposure to Pro-Tobacco and Anti-Tobacco Advertisements in the United States,” published in Substance Use and Misuse

Stephen Ferrara was among the authors of “Nurses in Health Policy: Lessons Learned from One Cohort of the American Academy of Nursing Jonas Policy Scholars Program,” published in Nursing Outlook.

Maureen George was among the authors of “Assessment of Home-Based Monitoring in Adults with Chronic Lung Disease: An Official American Thoracic Society Research Statement,” published in American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine;

“Impact of Utilizing a Composite Versus a Symptom-Only Validation Standard in the Development of the Asthma Impairment and Risk Questionnaire,” published in Journal of Asthma and Allergy; and “Pediatric Asthma Impairment and Risk Questionnaire: Rationale and Development of a Composite Control Tool,” published in Annals of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology

Student Sarah Harkins and Veronica Barcelona were the authors of “An Evaluation of Conceptual Frameworks to Improve Reproductive Health Outcomes Among Women with Physical Disabilities,” published in Journal of Advanced Nursing, and among the authors of “Corrigendum to ‘A Systematic Review of Community-Based Interventions to Address Perinatal Mental Health,’” published in Seminars in Perinatology, and “A Systematic Review of Community-Based Interventions to Address Perinatal Mental Health,” published in Seminars in Perinatology.

Arielle Hazi was among the authors of “Flowsheet Template for the Documentation of Allergic Reactions in Infants and Toddlers,” published in Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice

Amanda Hessels was a co-author of “Associations Between Negative Patient Safety Climate and Infection Prevention Practices,” published in American Journal of Infection Control

Tonda Hughes was among the authors of “Associations Between Gender and Sexuality Characteristics of Cisgender Bisexual Women and Risk of Sexual Assault,” published in International Journal of Sexual Health, and “Preparedness of Practicing Nurses in the Care of Sexual and Gender Diverse People in the United States: A Scoping Review,” published in Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Jung Kang, PhD ’24, and Patricia Stone were among the authors of “Differences in Timely Goals of Care Discussions in Nursing Homes Among Black Residents,” published in American Journal of Palliative and Hospice Care.

Ji Won Lee was among the authors of “Higher Patient Activation Is Associated with Lower Odds of Functional Limitation in Older Adults with Chronic Diseases,” published in Geriatric Nursing

Ji Won Lee, Patricia Stone, Jingjing Shang, Ashley Chastain, and Andrew Dick were among the authors of “Post-Acute Care Trends and Disparities After Joint Replacements in the United States, 1991–2018: A Systematic Review,” published in Journal of the American Medical Directors Association

Jianfang Liu and Jean-Marie Bruzzese were among the authors of “Asthma Knowledge: Self-Efficacy, and Self-Management Among Rural Adolescents with Poorly Controlled Asthma,” published in Journal of School Nursing.

Jianfang Liu; Jean-Marie Bruzzese; and Kasey Jackman, PhD ’17, were among the authors of “Disordered Eating in Early Adolescence: Disparities Among Minoritised Youth,” published in Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Jianfang Liu; Kasey Jackman, PhD ’17; and JeanMarie Bruzzese were the authors of “Sexual and Gender Minority Sleep Health Disparities and Minority Stress in Early Adolescence,” published in Journal of Adolescent Health

Amy McMenamin; Suzanne Courtwright, MS ’03; Jianfang Liu; and Lusine Poghosyan were among the authors of “Nurse Practitioner Work Environment and Rural Primary Care for Substance Use,” published in JNP: Journal for Nurse Practitioners

Amy McMenamin, Jianfang Liu, and Lusine Poghosyan were among the authors of “Acute Care Use Among Patients with Multiple Chronic Conditions Receiving Care from Nurse Practitioner Practices in Health Professional Shortage Areas,” published in Nursing Research, and “Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Work Environments and Emergency Department Utilization Among Older Adults with Substance Use Disorders in Rural Areas,” published in Journal of Substance Use and Addiction Treatment.

Stephanie Niño de Rivera; Natalie Benda; Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18; and Ruth Masterson Creber were among the authors of “Portal Confidentiality Concerns and Health Information Sharing and Access,” published in JAMA Pediatrics

Stephanie Niño de Rivera; Ruth Masterson Creber; Yihong Zhao; and Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18, were among the authors of “Public Perspectives on Increased Data Sharing in Health Research in the Context of the 2023 National Institutes of Health Data Sharing Policy,” published in PLoS One

Monica O’Reilly-Jacob was among the authors of “The Quality of Home-based Primary Care Delivered by Nurse Practitioners: A National Medicare Claims Analysis,” published in Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

Natalya Pasklinsky was among the authors of “Associations Between Nursing Students’ Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes and Participation in Experiential Learning on Care for People with Disabilities,” published in Nurse Educator.

Lusine Poghosyan was among the authors of “Adapting the Nurse Practitioner Primary Care Organizational Climate Questionnaire for Acute Care Nurse Practitioners,” published in Journal of Nursing Measurement

Lusine Poghosyan, Jianfang Liu, Kathleen Flandrick, Marcia Robinson, Maureen George, and Monica O’Reilly-Jacob were among the authors of “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Emergency Department Use Among Older Adults with Asthma and Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Work Environments,” published in Nursing Research

Nancy Reame was among the authors of “From Maca to Marijuana: Cultural Influences on Joint Pain Symptoms and Management in Urban Perimenopausal and Early Postmenopausal Latinas,” published in Menopause.

George Rodriguez was among the authors of “Intravenous Versus Oral Omadacycline

or Linezolid for Acute Bacterial Skin and Skin Infections: A Post Hoc Analysis of the OASIS Trials,” published in Infectious Diseases and Therapy

Sarah Rossetti, PhD ’09, was among the authors of “Defining Documentation Burden (DocBurden) and Excess DocBurden for All Health Professionals: A Scoping Review,” published in Applied Clinical Informatics, and “Interventions to Mitigate EHR and Documentation Burden in Health Professions Trainees: A Scoping Review,” published in Applied Clinical Informatics.

Sarah Rossetti, PhD ’09; Haomiao Jia; and Suzanne Bakken were among the authors of “Multisite Pragmatic Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial of the CONCERN Early Warning System,” published in medRxiv.

Rebecca Schnall, PhD ’09, was among the authors of “Bridge Nodes Linking Depression and Medication Taking Self-Efficacy Dimensions Among Persons With HIV: A Secondary Data Analysis,” published in AIDS and Behavior, and “Development and Testing of the WiseApp for Improving Medication Adherence Among Spanish Speakers,” published in Studies in Health Technology and Informatics

Rebecca Schnall, PhD ’09; Jianfang Liu; and Maeve Brin were among the authors of “Differences in Self-Reported Stress Versus Hair and Nail Cortisol Among Adolescent and Young Adult Males,” published in Nursing Research

Rebecca Schnall, PhD ’09, and Maxim Topaz were among the authors of “Relationship Between Hemoglobin and Specific Cognitive Domain Among Older Adults Using Network Analysis,” published in Aging and Mental Health.

Jingjing Shang and Patricia Stone were among the authors of “Development of a Symptom Self-Management Guide for Older Chinese Americans Receiving Kidney Replacement Therapy,” published in Nursing Research and Practice.

Arlene Smaldone, PhD ’03, was among the authors of “Assessing Multilevel Barriers to Hydroxyurea Adherence in Youth with Sickle Cell Disease Using Pharmacy-Based Refill Records,” published in Pediatric Blood and Cancer

Patricia Stone, Jingjing Shang, and Andrew Dick were among the authors of “Insurance-Based Disparities in Outcomes and Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation Utilization for Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients,” published in Anesthesiology

Jacquelyn Taylor was among the authors of “Caregiving and Hypertension in Younger Black Women: The Jackson Heart Study,” published in Hypertension, and “Childhood Racism and Cardiometabolic Risk in Latina Mothers Across the First Postpartum Year,” published in Psychosomatic Medicine.

Maxim Topaz was among the authors of “Harnessing the Power of Machine Learning and Electronic Health Records to Support Child Abuse and Neglect Identification in Emergency Department Settings,” published in Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, and “Social Determinants Documented Across Individuals from Different Racial and Ethnic Groups in Home Healthcare,” published in Studies in Health Technology and Informatics

Maxim Topaz and Maryam Zolnoori were among the authors of “Does Synthetic Data Augmentation Improve the Performances of Machine Learning Classifiers for Identifying Health Problems in Patient-Nurse Verbal Communications in Home Healthcare Settings?” published in Journal of Nursing Scholarship

Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18, was among the authors of “Nurses’ Roles in Artificial Intelligence Implementation: Results from a Mixed-Methods Study,” published in Studies in Health Technology and Informatics.

Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18, and Natalie Benda were among the authors of “Preparing for the Bedside—Optimizing a Postpartum Depression Risk Prediction Model for Clini-

cal Implementation in a Health System,” published in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA)

Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18; Sergey Kisselev; and Suzanne Bakken were among the authors of “Special Issue on Teaching and Training Future Health Informaticians: Increasing Generative Artificial Intelligence Competency Among Students Enrolled in Doctoral Nursing Research Coursework,” published in Applied Clinical Informatics.

Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18, and Maxim Topaz were among the authors of “Exploring the Full Potential of the Electronic Health Record: The Application of Natural Language Processing for Clinical Practice,” published in European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing.

Student David López Veneros was among the authors of “Leveraging Implementation Science at the Early-Stage Development of a Novel Telehealth-Delivered Fear of Exercise Program to Understand Intervention Feasibility and Implementation Potential: Feasibility Behavioral Intervention Study,” published in JMIR Formative Research

Student Zidu Xu and Maxim Topaz were among the authors of “Developing a Clinical Decision Support Framework for Integrating Predictive Models into Routine Nursing Practices in Home Health Care for Patients with Heart Failure,” published in Journal of Nursing Scholarship

Tingting Zhao and Elizabeth Corwin were among the authors of “Association Between Mitochondrial DNA Copy Number and Neurodevelopmental Outcomes Among Black and White Preterm Infants Up to Two Years of Age,” published in Interdisciplinary Nursing Research.

Maryam Zolnoori and Maxim Topaz were among the authors of “Using Natural Language Processing to Identify Home Health Care Patients at Risk for Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias,” published in Journal of Applied Gerontology.

Take Five Alumni Association Board President

1. What do you want to accomplish as the president of the Columbia Nursing Alumni Association?

My mentor in life wrote about Florence Nightingale, the founder of nursing:

“For Nightingale, having a sense of mission was indispensable in the profession of nursing, which is committed to protecting the precious gift of life.... It is a huge challenge to keep one’s sense of mission burning brightly to the very end. How can we do this? Through unity, through solidarity with others who share our mission. Nightingale stressed the importance of ‘fostering that bond of sympathy which community of aims and of action in good work induces.’ ... But life is full of setbacks and unexpected difficulties.... At times ... we should strive to encourage and support each other.”

(Florence Nightingale: In Tribute to the Century of Women by Daisaku Ikeda, pp. 12–14)

Together with the members of the Alumni Board and the Alumni Association, my hope is to continue to create a place where all alumni will feel a sense of community and take advantage of the many resources

that Columbia University has to offer. Currently I aim to focus on the upcoming Alumni Reunion and understanding how we can make it an event that alumni won’t want to miss each year!

2. Tell us about how you were involved as a student and how that translates to your role today.

During my time as a student, I served as student rep on various occasions as well as an elected senator representing Columbia Nursing at the Columbia University-wide senate level. One of the reasons I chose Columbia Nursing was because of the mission to foster nursing leaders. As a student, I felt I was able to take advantage of the opportunities that were available to me so that not only was I able to contribute more to the Columbia community but also learn to be a better leader. I was exposed to different people with various experiences, which helps me to this day.

My time as an alumna is already longer than the time I was a student, and I want to make sure that the alumni network is welcoming and always flourishing. Therefore, I was honored to have the opportunity to be a part of the Alumni Board and now

to become the Alumni Board president. It also gives me the opportunity to represent Columbia Nursing within the Columbia University Alumni Association (CAA).

3. What prompted your interest and decision to stay involved and join the Alumni Association directly after graduation?

Now as an alumna, I want students to have the same opportunity as I did, but also for my fellow alumni to feel that Columbia University is a part of their life, whether it is in social capacities, networking opportunities, career building, etc. As nurses, we all have the important characteristics and training to effect positive change in our community. We all work in different capacities but also utilize our skills in day-to-day life. Regardless, Columbia Nursing nurses make a difference each day. We also know it is not easy to do what we do, and times are difficult. I want to make sure that each of us has a place they can return to and feel like they are a

2024-2025 Alumni Association Board of Directors

Vanessa Battista, MS ’08

Maher Benham, DNP ’22

Donald Boyd, PhD ’17, Annual Fund Chair

Jesus Casida, MS ’96

Mona Francois, MS ’23

Hilda Haynes Lewis, MS ’99

Nia Josiah, DNP ’23

Rosalind Kendellen, MS ’74

Kimberly Lanfranca, MS ’06, Nominating Chair

Lora Peppard, DNP ’08

Martha Romney, MS ’81

Marjorie Salas Weis, DNP ’17

Olivia Velez, PhD ’11

Ian West, DNP ’24

Mallory Woods, DNP ’19, Secretary Julie Yoshimachi, DNP ’20, President

Alumni Association Board President Julie Yoshimachi, DNP ’20

part of a community that supports them and understands them. I truly believe that the stronger our alumni network is and the more connected our alumni are, the more impetus each of us will feel to go out into our communities and make them better places.

The opportunities that I have had at Columbia University as a student and alumna have further shaped me into who I am now. I also have gained a professional network and amazing friends whom I can rely on. With deep gratitude, I want to be able to give back to Columbia University by ensuring that others will have even more opportunities than I did.

4. Finish the sentence: I am a proud Columbia Nurse because … Columbia nurses are leaders no matter where they are, and Columbia nurses want to help the people they encounter. It is easy to feel like there is a lot going on in health care alone and our role is not an easy one. But when I think of all the amazing things my fellow Columbia Nursing alumni are doing in their respective ways, it gives me the strength to continue the important fight.

5. How did your time at Columbia Nursing impact the practicing nurse you are today? Besides learning clinical knowledge and skills in the classroom, I learned a lot about teamwork, leadership, and working as a community from my fellow students, the staff, and faculty at Columbia University. One of the things that really impacted my life was the Global Health program. I had the opportunity to go to Malawi twice, and there is one patient I encountered there that I think about every day. During especially difficult times with patients, I think of this patient and remind myself of the beautiful moments I had with him. As a nurse, often there are many unfortunate outcomes we encounter, but holding on to the good experiences, like caring for that patient in Malawi, has saved me many times.

A GLIMPSE OF ALUMNI EVENTS THROUGHOUT THE YEAR

Alumni at the Nurse Practitioner Association New York State Conference in Saratoga Springs, NY, October 2024.

Alumni at the recent Graduate Happy Hour, October 2024.

2024–2025

Class Notes

1960s

Linda Lang Hampson, BS ’67, still enjoys working part-time as a diabetes educator. Her travel days are mostly over, but she is grateful for the many experiences she has had. She has volunteered as an LTC ombudsman for 18 years and counting.

1970s

Deborah Acevedo, BS ’71, has retired from NewYork-Presbyterian after 45 years. One of Deborah’s proudest accomplishments as a NICU nurse was helping to establish the Cuddler Program at the NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in 2011. The program allows volunteers to comfort and soothe infants when their parents can’t be at their bedside.

Marsha Gottlieb Bronsther, BS ’74, still works as a school nurse in Maryland and is still loving it. She has been blessed with a wonderful husband, four amazing kids, and three incredible grandchildren, and, of course, her Bernese mountain dog.

Charlotte Byrne, BS ’72, currently resides in Newton, Massachusetts. She has selfpublished a book, And Then Discovery, which includes some of her basic life lessons, some poetry, and two essays regarding a worldview outside of shame and blame and inspired by microbiology and Andean cosmic vision. She is working on a second book, this one for children. She is currently on her way to Peru for ceremony and adventure. She married a Peruvian, now deceased, but continues to enjoy family ties in Peru. After graduation

she lived in Peru for 11 years, had two children, studied for her MBA, and managed a small manufacturing company. She returned to the U.S., enrolled in the Harvard School of Public Health, and got her MS in health policy and management. She now gives workshops and travels.

Betty Chin Jung, BS ’71, authored “Epidemiology in Community Health Care,” a chapter in the most recent edition of Rector’s Community and Public Health Nursing: Promoting the Public’s Health, published in February 2025. Her latest lecture for the University of Pittsburgh’s online Supercourse, “What to Know About Long Covid,” can be found on YouTube. Her “Introduction to Epidemiology” lecture series has been one of Supercourse’s more popular offerings for the past two decades.

Ruth Emily Parker, MS ’79, said that going to Columbia to become an RN and then a CNM (certified nurse-midwife) was the best educational decision! She enjoyed a beautiful career as a midwife in Colorado. She has one son who is married and lives in Kentucky. Currently, she is working toward a certificate in Native American studies at the University of Colorado. Her home is a fantastic senior community of bright and active people. They participate in all kinds of cultural, social, and volunteer activities. “Happy 50th Reunion to all my classmates!” she writes.

1990s

Lucinda Canty, BS ’91, was awarded Columbia Nursing’s 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award for Nursing Practice.

Mary Ellen French, MS ’99, is a proud graduate who had Rita Marie John as her mentor. During her career, she has worked in the PICU and the NICU, and observing unsafe practices propelled her into quality and patient-safety roles. She has been a surveyor with the Joint Commission for six years.

She believes her education and training at Columbia Nursing prepared her to be a patient advocate, which she now does at the international level.

2000s

Bethanie Burkholder, MS ’04, has been honored to spend the last seven years managing a small outpatient clinic in the Rohingya refugee community in Bangladesh.

Jennifer Dohrn, DNP ’08, was awarded Columbia Nursing’s 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award for a Distinguished Career in Nursing.

Melissa Hladek, MS ’04, was inducted as a 2024 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

Jared Kutzin, BS ’05, was awarded Columbia Nursing’s 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award for Nursing Education.

Clare Cardo McKegney, DNP ’08, was awarded the 2024 Presidential Commendation by the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners (NAPNAP).

Rose Chapman Rodriguez, MS ’06, was the Columbia Nursing Alumni Commencement Speaker in May 2022. She obtained her DNP at Case Western Reserve in 2023.

Elisheva Schachter Rosner, BS ’05, completed her doctorate in nursing.

Sarah Collins Rossetti, PhD ’09, received the Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Innovation in Informatics, part of the American Medical Informatics Association’s Signature Awards program.

Andrea Sonenberg, PhD ’07, was inducted as a 2024 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

Edwidge Thomas, DNP ’05, was inducted as a 2024 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

2010s

Melissa Beauchemin, PhD ’19, was inducted as a 2024 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

Felesia Bowen, DNP ’10, was the Columbia Nursing Alumni Commencement Speaker in May 2024.

Eileen Carter, PhD ’14, was inducted as a 2024 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

Kenrick Cato, PhD ’14, received the Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Innovation in Informatics, part of the American Medical Informatics Association’s Signature Awards program.

Kasey Jackman, PhD ’17, and Allison Norful, PhD ’17, were recognized by the American Academy of Nursing as contributors to Columbia Nursing and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s Linking to Improve Nursing Care and Knowledge (LINK) Academic-Practice Partnership. The academy honored LINK with an Edge Runners award. We want to make sure we stay connected and that you are up to date with events and initiatives at Columbia Nursing. Email sonalumni@cumc.columbia.edu with your updated contact and job information.

Mollie Finkel, MS ’12, was the Columbia Nursing Alumni Commencement Speaker in May 2023.

Ann-Margaret Navarra, PhD ’11, associate professor at Stony Brook School of Nursing, has been named to a national fellowship program that will examine social determinants of health (SDOH) in the context of eliminating health-care inequities in the United States. She is one of 10 “innovators” selected by the Insti-

tute for Policy Solutions at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing for the Nursing Science Incubator for SDOH Solutions Fellowship.

S. Raquel Ramons, PhD ’16, was inducted as a 2024 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

Laurie Ray, MS ’11, has been appointed the specialty director of the Women’s Health/ Gender-Related Nurse Practitioner Program at Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing.

Samantha Stonbraker, PhD ’16, was inducted as a 2024 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing. She also received Columbia Nursing’s 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award for Nursing Research.

2024-2025

In Memoriam

1940s

Rosemary H. Beaumont, Diploma ’43

Helen H. Burnside, MS ’46

Alice Wielich Caldwell, Diploma ’44

Dorothy W. Crozier, MS ’48

Dorothy E. Loescher, BS ’45

Marilyn J. Lynough, BS ’49

Nora M. McLaughlin, BS ’44

1950s

Patricia Larson Bishop, BS ’58

Marian Fiske, BS ’58

Kathleen P. Fogarty, MS ’59

Mary K. Galanakis, BS ’53

Nancie Gavin, MS ’58

Lois Gebhardt, BS ’53

Elisabeth B. Giffin, BS ’52

Betty Hanway, MS ’51

Susan Pope Hays, BS ’54

Margaret Prentice Laughlin, BS ’50

Rosalie M. Lombard, BS ’51

Dorothy B. Pabst, BS ’55

Marguerite L. Peoples, BS ’57

Sally P. Putnam, Diploma ’56

Norma S. Schlossman, BS ’59

Constance S. Schyler, BS ’55

Phyllis Bingham Severson, BS ’52

Vera Venturino, Diploma ’56

1960s

Sonya Baum, BS ’62

Diane R. Behrens, BS ’64

Urla D. Brady, BS ’60

Pauline Bryans, BS ’60

Carole R. Coviello, BS ’67

Roanne Dahlen-Hartfield, BS ’61

Lois C. Davenport, BS ’60

Janice Taylor Forbes, BS ’63

Ann P. Heaney, BS ’64

Barbara S. Hoyt, BS ’60

Mathilde Huckins, BS ’62

Patricia Kane Hurzeler, MS ’69

Sandra Ronan, BS ’67

1970s

Lillian Higgins, BS ’72

Beth G. Lair, BS ’79

Jasmine N. Lampadarios, BS ’71

Margaret G. Maffet, BS ’72

Barbara A. O’Neill, BS ’75

Anne Scott Whiteside, BS ’77

Kenneth E. Zwolski, BS ’78

1980s

Jeanne Denault, BS ’85

Freda S. Eisenberg, BS ’84

Lynn Grossman, MS ’85

Jacqueline M. Torres, BS ’80

Mary Ellen Whitfield, BS ’81

1990s

Mary A. Baker, MS ’95

Cynthia Dart Harrison, MS ’97

Mary Lynn Iwanowicz, MS ’94

2010s

Mary W. Byrne, DNP ’11

Carolyn Sun, PhD ’15, was awarded Columbia Nursing’s 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award for Nursing Education.

Aluem Tark, PhD ’19, was awarded Columbia Nursing’s 2024 Early Career Alumni Award as an Emerging Nurse Leader. She was also inducted as a 2024 fellow to the New York Academy of Medicine.

Jasmine Travers, PhD ’16, was inducted as a 2024 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

Meghan Reading Turchioe, PhD ’18, was inducted as a 2024 fellow to the American Heart Association.

Fabienne Ulysse, DNP ’11, was inducted as a 2024 fellow to the American Academy of Nursing.

2020s

Kelsey Baffour-Addo, MS ’22, was named a 2024 Nurses Educational Funds (NEF) Scholar.

Danya Kelly, MS ’23, received a 2024 DAISY Foundation Award.

Veronica Kuang, DNP ’24, is currently working at a pediatric clinic as an FNP.

Keisha Paul, MS ’23, was named a 2024 Nurses Educational Funds (NEF) Scholar.

Ian West, DNP ’24, received the Campbell Award, given annually to a graduating student at each Columbia University school for exceptional leadership and Columbia spirit.