Alumni Names in the News
Sampson ’77 Earns Doctorate, Appointment at U of Michigan
Deborah A. Sampson was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania this spring
and has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing in Ann Arbor. Dr. Sampson earned a BSN from Western Connecticut State University (’83) and an MSN from Yale University (’87), as well as a post-Master’s Certificate/Family Nurse Practitioner from UNH (’96).
Since graduating from the Nursing program at NHTI in 1977, Dr. Sampson accumulated an impressive professional and academic portfolio, including positions as a nurse, nurse practitioner, university educator, researcher, administrator, and health consultant, and has been widely published in the health care field.
Some of her most recent works include “Nurse Practitioner Power over Prescribing Practice Boundaries and State Law Negotiation; New Hampshire as Case Study,” which is in press at Nursing History Review, and as coauthor of a book chapter, "Research in support of nurse practitioners", in Nurses, Nurse Practitioners: Evolution to Advanced Practice with Drs. Frances Hughes, Sean Clarke, Julie Fairman, and Eileen Sullivan-Marx. Her disseration at UPenn was entitled, “Determination and Determinants; Negotiating New Hampshire Nurse Practitioner Prescribing Legislation, 1973 to 1985.”
Throughout her academic career, she has continued to work as a clinical staff nurse or nurse practitioner. “I feel that it is important to practice to remain in touch with the most important aspects of patient care, and the issues of staff nurses as well, to be a credible and competent teacher and manager,” she says.
She was a National Institutes of Health Predoctoral Scholar for three years at the University of Pennsylvania, an awarded bestowed upon few nurses. “ I was fortunate to be one of only two nursing history predoc scholars given the honour in the years I was funded,” she notes. She also has been a fellow at Columbia University and the Annenberg School of Communications at UPenn, had opportunities to do research with the National Cancer Institutes in Central America and to teach and consult in Viet Nam.
Now sporting a resume including listing in the International Who’s Who of Nursing, manuscript reviewer for the Journal for Research in Nursing, and the official historian of the NH Nurse Practitioner Association, among other accolades, Dr. Sampson recently spoke at the New Hampshire Board of Nursing Day of Discussion and credited NHTI for putting her on the right track.
“NHTI was the most demanding educational experience of my nursing career,” she says. “I learned important critical thinking skills, as well as to remain committed to clinical excellence and quality patient care, to always keep the patient's well being as my first consideration.”
Classmates like Suzanne (Gagnon) Laforest, Brenda (Onefry) Sanborn and Bob Sanborn, and others helped her endure and succeed, she says, during the rigors of a NHTI education.
PHOTO CAPTION: Dr. Deborah A. Sampson, NHTI ' 77, receives her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in the company of her husband, Capt. Dennis R. Caldwell (Continental Airlines).