Distinguished Alumna Award 2003
Rhoda Shih-Luan Lee Sun
Class of 1958
Her professional career epitomizes nursing leadership and embodies the mission of Yale School of Nursing "better health care for all people". She has devoted herself to the education of nurses and the improvement of health care in the People's Republic of China, in a career that spans 50 years.
A native of Bejing in HeBei Province in China, she graduated from Taiwan Normal University in Taipei and traveled to the United States, enrolling at Yale School of Nursing where she earned a Master of Science in Nursing in 1958. Boston University awarded her with a Doctor of Education in 1977. Her teaching experience began as a Clinical Instructor at Greenwich Hospital School of Nursing in Connecticut, later at Mt. Auburn Hospital School of Nursing in Massachusetts and at Boston University School of Nursing.
In 1980, China's Ministry of Health invited her to conduct a seminar for the Nanjing Military District. She was greeted by a group of 42 nurses, who were training for positions in leadership within hospitals and professional organizations. These students were eager to learn not only about what was happening in the outside world, but to find a new direction of the nursing profession in a rapidly reforming China.
A true pioneer, this alumna recognized the growing need for broad reform in the health care system in China and incorporated into her curriculum the extraordinarily popular "responsibility system", a system of reform in China which led to increased productivity, improved quality and greater efficiencies. Her students were inspired and began to adapt both the principle and practice of the "responsibility system" into nursing practice. As a result, they created a basis on which to be recognized and rewarded for their individual efforts, unprecedented in Communist China at that time.
Through her teaching and mentoring, she was able to guide her students to recognize a new theoretical framework for developing modern nursing principles and procedures. Her influence and scholarship was the basis for the establishment of true nursing curricula in a higher education setting, elevating nurses from roles as technicians and maids to that of health care professionals. "Responsibility nursing" set the new standard for nursing practice in China and claimed this alumna as its inspiration.
Today, her legacy lives on in her students who advance nursing practice in China as leaders in hospitals, medical schools, nursing schools, and in provincial and national professional nursing organizations. Her work also continues to fuel the accomplishments of current students and faculty at Yale School of Nursing who partner with colleagues abroad in the development of new scholarship that informs nursing education and practice around the world.
In recognition of her unprecedented contributions to nursing education and scholarship in China, for her leadership in global health care and the pursuit of culturally competent health education, Yale School of Nursing Alumna/us Association proudly recognizes Rhoda Shih-Luan Lee Sun with its Distinguished Alumna Award for 2003.
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