Nancy Lenaghan: Brookdale Community College

One afternoon a couple of years ago, Nancy Lenaghan, M.S.N., A.P.R.N., C.N.E., a veteran nurse and nurse educator, typed onto her computer’s keyboard the name of a woman—a nurse and former neighbor—who had had a profound influence on her as a child.

 

Within seconds, the woman’s name—Karen—popped up, along with her contact information. Lenaghan dialed the number on the screen and heard a voice from her long-distant past. Lenaghan asked if she could pay Karen a visit, and Karen, then in her 90s and living in nursing home in Virginia—enthusiastically agreed.

 

For Lenaghan, the effort was well worth it. At long last, she finally had the opportunity to express her deep gratitude to Karen for helping her cope duringthe most trying time of her childhood: watching her father fight a losing battle against stomach cancer. Karenhad made it easier for Lenaghan, then just eight years old, to cope with the trauma of the death of a parent.

 

Karen had visited Lenaghan’s childhood home daily and had helped her father live with, and ultimately die from, the disease—an act of compassion, caring and generosity that taught Lenaghan the true meaning and deep value of nursing. “My mother was such a loving and courageous caregiver, but I don’t think she could have done it without the support of our kind neighbor,” Lenaghan says. “When Karen came, things would be better. You can imagine the stress in the house. But she always seemed to make it right. She had a very calming influence.”

 

During her visit in 2009, Lenaghan thanked Karen for her help all those years ago. Karen replied: “Why wouldn’t I do that. Nursing is who I am.”

 

Nursing is who Lenaghan is too. “I became a nurse because I wanted to touch human lives,” she says. “I consider it a privilege to work with humans at the most vulnerable time in their lives.”

 

Lenaghan had decided she wanted to become a nurse by the time she entered adolescence, and never doubted it for a moment.

 

An excellent student and a natural leader, Lenaghan won a full scholarship to attend the School of Nursing at Northeastern

University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree. After graduating, she worked as a staff nurse in a local hospital and then taught nursing for a couple of years before deciding to get her master’s degree. She graduated from University of Rhode Island in 1977 and spent the next 12 years working in the intensive care unit and the emergency department at Rhode Island Hospital and Prince Georges General Hospital in Maryland.

 

Lenaghan transitioned into full-time teaching after the birth of her two sons and became an instructor at Brookdale Community College. She has taught there ever since, and also served as department chair for three years. As a teacher, her main focus has been preparing graduates for the increasing complexity of the profession, which has changed dramatically since she first became a nurse in the 1970s.

 

 

Today’s nurses, she says, have more responsibilities than their predecessors and are now more likely to be seen as members of an interprofessional team. Nurses are also providing care for a patient population that is older, and sicker, than in the past. And, because health care costs are soaring, patients are more likely to be discharged sooner, leaving nurses responsible for patients in more acute conditions.

 

“Being a nurse is a lot better these days in many ways, but it’s also a lot more difficult,” Lenaghan says.

 

A more recent focus has been improving quality and safety in nursing, especially for older Americans. She sharpened her interest in the subject after a personal experience in which she lost a family member to a medical error. In 2003,Lenaghan’saunt died after a surgical mishap and subsequent tragic complications.

 

Transforming nurse education is one answer to the problem of medical errors, Lenaghan says. To that end, she has developed a simulation project designed to teach nursing students to stay focused and manage competing responsibilities in chaotic, high pressure health care environments. “We can’t teach the same way we used to,” she says. “We need to develop new strategies so students can internalize what safety is all about.”

 

She puts her knowledge to practice as a nurse practitioner, a title she earned in 2002. In this capacity, she cares mainly for older Americans and is intimately familiar with the problems they face in accessing quality, affordable care. Her patients often wait for hours to be seen in the emergency department, lose ground while they are in the hospital, and have trouble communicating with multiple providers after they are discharged.

 

She knows care can be better. Before she passed away, Lenaghan’s mother received care at a supportive hospice program that provided a variety of services—even music therapy. “I don’t know how I could have gotten through that without the support of hospice,” she says.

 

Lenaghan wants all of her patients to have that kind of quality care. So instead of planning for retirement, she’s starting a new phase of her career; she just started working toward her Doctorate of Nursing Practice (D.N.P.)at Wilkes University. “I’m definitely a senior citizen, but that’s not stopping me,” she says. 

 

A full-time professor of nursing at Brookdale and an active nurse practitioner, Lenaghan is now also a student. Her coursework will take three to four years to complete and will include eight theory courses and 500 clinical hours. She gets four hours of sleep a night, and considers five a luxury, and has no plans to retire any time soon.

 

“I want to continue to practice as long as I can,” she says.