Earlier this year, Ashley Elks became the first person to embark on the most recent higher education program at the University of East Carolina, a double -track doctor in nursing practice and a master’s degree in business administration who will see graduates ready to excel at the highest level of health care leadership, to make lasting changes in North Carolina.
Dr. Pam Rudisill, vice-president of the excellence of nursing nursing from the ECU Health (right), speaks with Dr Bim Akintade, dean of the College of Nursing, and Tywanna Purkett during a graduation ceremony for student nurses who participated in an external program at ECU Health Clinics.
Dr. Kimberly Hunter, interim CEO of hospitals at Iowa University, recently, supported That because the nursing labor is extremely female and only 17.5% of the heads of the management of the health system are women, the number of women in high management is rare. The emptiness of female leaders is exacerbated by vote This shows that only 1 in 10 nurse – of nearly 4.3 million nurses authorized in the country, according to a 2024 report From the American Association of Colleges of Nursing – plans to pursue increased posts of authority.
Dr. Mary Jo Nimmo, director of the nursing school leadership program at the Department of Advanced Nursing and Education Department, said that she had spoken with nurses in leadership roles who had relayed her the importance of not only having the bedside leadership skills, but also academic qualifications to have a header.
For the commercial side of health care, Nimmo said, nursing care is the greatest expenditure of staff, nurses representing up to 80% of the workforce. The benefit of DNP education, associated with acquiring specific leadership skills and improving quality, is the development of nurses who can defend other members of the profession.
Make the next step
Ashley Elks is the first member of the DNP-MBA program of the Nursing College.
Elks is from Winterville and a family of nurses; She grew up knowing that she would follow the traces of her mother. She graduated from the College of Nursing at the University of East Carolina in 2011 and went directly to work as a bedside nurse, where she stayed six years.
“Then, I made a big leap and I went directly to heart nursing care to be the leader of the AVC program. It was one of the most rewarding moments of my career, leading this program,” said Elks.
In 2018, she felt ready to return to school and finished her master’s degree in a nursing direction of UNC Charlotte, at the height of the COVVI-19 restrictions. Meanwhile, she started her first company, a clinic of hydration and well-being, which she sold in 2022. She continued in nursing administration in the Human Resources Department of ECU Health Medical Center before starting a second company, a health care consultation company that focuses on work cultivation.
“I like to build working environments where nurses thrive,” said Elks.
Last year, during a meeting with the dean of the College of Nursing, Dr. Bim Akintade, she received a new intriguing program that would merge her two passions – nursing and business care.
“He said we’re going to do a DNP-MBA, and I said it was in my alley,” recalls Elks. “It was logical to do them together, so I signed up the next day.”
The program and the need
Pam Rudisill is vice-president of nurse excellence at Ecu Health.
The Nursing College launched a double control program in nursing sciences and master’s degree in business administration in 2023. Currently, 16, students are registered in this track, and the first graduate should cross the scene in 2027.
But a gap has remained for nurses who already have a graduate diploma and who seek to pass a next similar step. The College of Nursing offers a double MBA and a doctoral program in nurse who will require the same content of the business school and will ask students to take the same courses as traditional DNP students.
DRE Julie Linder, president of the Collège Nursing and Education Department, said nurses have traditionally not been considered businessmen, but that the new program will help change this perception.
“As an infirmer, you never forget where you come from, so things that a nurse with an MBA could implement would be different from someone who has no experience in nursing,” said Linder.
Linder believes that the importance of filling corporate and nursing worlds is improved by providing nurses who work in administrative positions with opportunities to engage with advanced research and carry out research themselves, which can be disseminated in nursing labor to improve conditions from time to time.
“As a rule, research takes 10 to 15 to 20 years to move from development to practice,” said Linder.
Nimmo agrees. She said nurses are not known to have proven a return on investment in their research, but she thinks that the aspect of the profession is changing.
“Our dream is that these people get their MBAs, acquire knowledge of finance as well as improvement in quality and combine this with their experience. It will be interesting to look at,” said Nimmo.
Transformation of health care and role of nurses
Nimmo has said that many doctors now have competitive MBA diplomas in the independent business world and to improve operations within major health systems.
“Many of them will take a year of residence leave to get their MBA, so it allows us to be at the same table with these doctors,” said Nimmo.
The advantage for patients in the combination of expertise in nursing and businesses is an enrichment of the art and science of a caring profession. Linder said nursing is more than black and white on a spreadsheet – there are emotions, feelings, sadness, happiness and relief: “All the things that patients live and experience just to know that there is a nurse who is looking for them.”
Nimmo has recognized that, in some cases, there is room for the tightening of belts in health establishments, which commercial courses will help future graduates of the program to discern.
“Understand that we may have to cut certain resources, or perhaps we examine certain things, is brought to light so that we can allow ourselves to take care of the patient in the future,” said Nimmo.
DNP student and member of the faculty of the nursing college in nursing in clinical laboratories of the college.
Pam Rudisill, vice-president of nurse excellence at ECU Health, has been a nurse since the mid-1970s, and she has been working in health care administration in major health systems in North Carolina, Tennessee and Florida. She said the academic partnership between ECU Health and the College of Nursing is like those she has known before and establishes the norm in the way universities are preparing nurses to be medical leaders.
“From the point of view of nursing – innovation, the strategy – we already have it in the ECU health structure as a whole thanks to the management of Dr. Trish fucks, our head of nursing, but having this expertise in studies (ELKS) will also be very beneficial,” said Rudisill.
And it is not only the main center of the Greenville hospital which benefits from the nursing management. Rudisill said that the ECU Health has many nurses in management positions through the system, including the presidents of the ECU Health Beaufort Hospital and the ECU Health Edgecombe Hospital.
The health of the ECU has long demonstrated that nurses as leaders; The chief of the hospital system is a nurse. Rudisill believes that he has Elks, a system of nursing nursing who makes an active part of the association of former nursing college, because the first to tackle the two-diplomas program will provide a feedback loop between school and hospital, which will improve the learning results for future students of the DNP-MBA program.
“This is a new program, so that Ashley can assess it and say:” This part of the program was great, but perhaps watching this, this and this “. As we go ahead, it will be a continuum, “said Rudisill. “Having expertise with the two elements – nursing practice and the sense of businesses – is important. It gives nurses the opportunity to become the roles of the future. ”
Elks said the nurses are trained to be problem -day problems of the first day of the nursing school, that it is “in the DNA DNA DNA to solve really complex problems”.
Elks thinks that health care is transformed to a population of the population of the population, where TV visits and routine care will take the place of long expectations in hospitals, and nurses will be at the front line of this revolution.
“We are going to arrive at the place where you only come to the hospital if you need a surgeon,” said Elks, but she knows how to get there, the nurses will need a complexity of skills to lead to the bedside and the meeting room.
The evolution of health care occurs at a dizzying speed, and Elks said that it wanted to be at the head of the radical transformation which is cruelly necessary to make health care more accessible, while being aware of the budgetary realities of health affairs.
“It is really important to have academic training to create your credibility, to sail in these spaces. When you talk about women in business, which is a whole different layer, you must have street credits,” said Elks. “When you are a nurse with really difficult conversations on productivity and endowment models and finance, this helps to have an MBA.”