Kimberly Long 0:00

Hello, everyone. We are thrilled to have Dr. Kimberly Paris. She is the program director for the Doctor of Nursing Practice Program at University of San Francisco School of Nursing and Health Professions. Welcome, Dr. Paris. Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Long. It's so good to have you. I just wanted to get some of your expertise in a couple of areas. And but I want to start out with just walking through your journey to academic leadership and if there were any defining moments that you experienced during that process.

Kimberly Perris 0:35

Yeah, sure. Well, I am fairly new to academia, I would say. It wasn't very long ago. I was at the bedside at a student health center up until 2015, as a matter of fact, when I achieved my master's and then went on to another organization and started working on my doctorate. I'd say defining moment for me was when I became curious. They were looking for a director of nursing at Cal Poly Humboldt. And I had gone back to school because I really felt like there was a need for nurses to be better utilized in healthcare. We were really underutilizing nurses in the outpatient settings in particular. So that was a real driver and passion for me to go back to school and all the projects that I did and everything. So I was really curious about this new nursing program and where they were wanting to take that. Were they wanting to relaunch an old program or really create something that was suited for the future of nursing and what healthcare needs now? And so I started asking questions and I this, you know, the people that I was asking questions of said, why don't you apply? And so I applied for the position as the director of nursing at Cal Poly Humboldt. And I never in a million years would have dreamed that that would have been such a huge passion project for me. And I was able to create something from the ground up that I felt was geared to working nurses and really having nurses be feel like they're elevated to work to the top of their license. And I continue to strive to, that's my driver, continues to be the driver for me in our DNP program as well. So that was the biggest turning point. If someone had told me I was going to be director of nursing, starting a program, then working in academia teaching, I would have never believed that. So it opened up a lot of doors for me. And I think just achieving a doctor of nursing practice degree as well just really opened up so many doors that I couldn't have imagined.

Kimberly Long 2:36

Oh, that is wonderful. Now, you know what? You have expertise in both service and academia. From your perspective, what is the greatest opportunity to strengthen alignment between those two healthcare entities?

Kimberly Perris 2:49

I think in all of my career, I've crossed both, well, especially since my role at Humboldt, building all the relationships, all of the spaces that I needed to be in to build partnerships, put me in those spaces of having conversations with people in practice, the CNOs, the CNEs, attending academic conferences, meeting people that led me to other spaces like serving at CACN on the board for CACN, eventually the president. I think just having those conversations and like speaking of the doors that have opened, I serve in a lot of different spaces where we are having conversations about how academia and practice can come together, whether it's with the hospital settings, I serve on the HCI council, we're having conversations about where the need is and where we need to invest the funds to strengthen the spaces in our workforce.

Kimberly Long 3:45

You know, and when you mentioned resources and funding and so forth, with everything that's happening in healthcare now, we have so many competing priorities. And trying to figure out where we need to focus our resources gets to be quite the challenge. How have you in the past navigated competing priorities and what recommendations would you give someone who had to deal with limited resources but multiple priorities?

Kimberly Perris 4:12

Yeah, I think well, I'm thinking that currently in academia, there's a major shift to transform our curriculum. At USF, we're on a timeline to transform all of our courses, all of our curriculum. And so there's a lot of competing priorities with faculty and balancing their work with the passion in their courses that in what they've been teaching, and trying to rethink and redesign what we want that to look like. Putting on your inner your hat and innovation and trying to think outside the box to re-evaluate and not just keep turning over and doing the same thing over and over, but really thinking about what we need for the future. What do our students need? What do they need with technology? How do our teaching and learning practices need to be kind of reinvent what we've been doing for so long? And nursing is sometimes slow to change to those, to do things in a new way. So we are having to partner with our practice partners, those of us in academia, and really listen to what the product, the nurses that we're we're sending out into the workforce, whether it's your associate degree, your BSN prepared nurses, your doctor of nursing practice prepared nurses, what's the need in practice and really having those partnerships and listening to what that need is, getting around the table with each other. We can't just work in a silo and work within the structure of our own courses. We have to think outside the box and listen to what other folks are doing. I think that my advice would be being open and also remembering, like, we all need to have that conceptual, like, what's the reason why we're doing this? A colleague of mine just said that today in an interview. We were interviewing DMP students. And so, like the question was, what's a recipe for success? And one of those things is remembering your North Star. What's your why? What is the reason you keep showing up every day? Why do I keep doing the work that I'm doing? Because I see the big picture of how it can be helpful. But the day-to-day weeds, it can be hard to like lift your head up and see what's going on around you. I think just the conversations that we really need to keep having conversations, showing up, participating in boards and councils and having nurses be around the table with other people besides just nurses.

Kimberly Long 6:36

Yeah. And your point about being in the weeds, you know, it's it's sometimes we get so busy doing that it keeps us from being a raise up and a global picture. And I resonate with that completely. And thinking about global, you know, we have a lot of legislative things going on, a lot of regulatory things going on that nursing experts and professionals really don't have a lot of input in. How can leaders more effectively influence that legislation and those regulatory decisions that are impacting nursing as well as healthcare delivery? What would you recommend from that perspective?

Kimberly Perris 7:15

You know, I think I think we have to, as nurses, again, keep showing up and not feel like we have to be the expert. We don't have to be the policy expert to be the one that stands up and has a voice or or gets around the table and begins having conversations with your senator or what have you. I served as the grassroots liaison for a time when I was uh working for the CSU system and went to Capitol Hill and had to start having these conversations with the legislators and leading people to have these conversations. And you just have to start having them and then you start getting comfortable having them. You know, it's kind of a foreign language to a lot of nurses, I would say, and nurses at the bedside are intimidated and don't see themselves as being able to make an impact. But every time we tell a story, like we tell the story about what nurses are doing and the impact that they make, I think that's what we as nurses and nurse leaders need to just continue to have those conversations amongst ourselves and then be able to share those stories. It's the stories that we tell with our legislators. Anyone will listen. Sort of helping them see the reality of what's really going on, huh? Yeah, sharing the story of the impact that nurses are having. And nurses oftentimes aren't comfortable. They don't think about telling the story of their impact, they're just doing the work that they do. But it's really important as the largest workforce that we are sharing the impact that we're having at the patients, the families, the students. That's making a difference in our healthcare system.

Kimberly Long 8:46

Oh yeah. And the criticality of nursing in healthcare. It's vital for us to be able to communicate that. So Dr. Paris, I thank you so much for taking time out of your day to share your experience and expertise with us today. I know that the listeners will get a lot of value from your words and from your experiences. So thank you so much.

Kimberly Perris 9:11

Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you and I appreciate having this opportunity.