Distinguished Alumna Award 2008
Bernice Coleman
Class of 1983
Bernice Coleman '83 was presented with the Distinguished Alumna/us Award on September 27 at the Annual Alumnae/i Banquet held at the Graduate Club in New Haven. Dr. Coleman has worked for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center as a Clinical Nurse Specialist and currently as a Nurse Practitioner in Cardiovascular Surgery, Heart and Lung Transplantation and Ventricular Assist Device Programs.
The following is the text of the Award citation:
She grew up in the shadow of Yale-New Haven Hospital; her first job was as a nurse's aide at that very institution. Her preparation as an LPN whetted her thirst for knowledge, and after earning her Baccalaureate in Nursing from the University of Bridgeport, she became a Yale Nurse, graduating with a masters in medical/surgical nursing. Hooked on research and advanced practice, she went on to a PhD from UCLA and then both a post-doctoral fellowship in immunogenics, and an NIH genetics fellowship.
Putting together her research and her love for practice at the Comprehensive Transplantation Center and Ventricular Assist Programs at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, she is expanding the role of nurse practitioner, taking on the interdisciplinary management of patients. She works with patients for whom heart transplant is not an immediate option; they will go home with a device to keep them alive. She prepares the patient, the family, and the community with education, advice, and necessary protocols to support all of them when the patient returns home.
She has married her commitment to equity in healthcare with her science by studying the outcomes of cytokine gene polymorphism on ethnic transplant outcomes. This topic lies on the cutting edge of policy, science and culturally safe practice.
She is as generous with herself as with her science. As Chair of the Nursing Research Council at Cedars Sinai, she promotes study of biomedical research outcomes for bedside nurses. She helped establish an annual conference for showcasing research and quality improvement projects presented by nurses. She serves as a research mentor for new nurses in a program conducted by the National Coalition of Ethnic Minority Nurses.
She has found the thread of advanced practice nursing and research and woven it with the strong fabric formed in the New Haven shadows. The Yale University School of Nursing and her Alumnae/i Association take great pride in claiming Bernice Coleman of the class of 1983 and presenting her the Yale University School of Nursing Distinguished Alumna Award for 2008.
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