Donna Kaye Diers* ‘64

90 Outstanding Yale Nurses Recipient

Class of 1964

Prior to her passing, Donna Diers, PhD, RN, FAAN, revolutionized graduate nursing education. As the YSN Annie W. Goodrich Professor Emerita, sixth dean of the School, and American Academy of Nursing Living Legend, Dr. Diers was an outstanding teacher and administrator, a researcher who shed light on the work of nurses, and an advocate for women in the Ivy League male-dominated environment of the 1960s and 1970s.

Her contributions to nursing were myriad. Dr. Diers chronicled and advocated for the development of advanced practice nursing and engagement in public policy. Her work with diagnosis–related group (DRG)–based information for hospital data systems has informed clinical, operational, and financial decision-making in the United States and Australia.

As a newly appointed dean in 1972, at only 34 years old, Dr. Diers earned wide attention as a visionary of nursing education for instituting the early graduate nursing programs that led to nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, and nurse-midwives. Since then, Yale’s Graduate Entry Prespecialty in Nursing program has been replicated worldwide.

Her publications appeared in all major nursing journals in the United States and in many journals in health services and nursing in the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. She was editor of Image: Journal of Nursing Scholarship for eight years. Her book, Speaking of Nursing: Narratives of Practice, Research, Policy and the Profession received the American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award in 2005.

Dr. Diers was inducted into the YSN Hall of Fame in 2002, received the 1983 YSN Distinguished Alumna Award, and was presented with the 1998 Annie Goodrich Award for Excellence in Teaching. She was recipient of the Jessie M. Scott Award from the American Nurses Association in 1986, was elected a Member of the Institute of Medicine-National Academy of Sciences in 1982, and was recipient of an honorary doctor of science from the University of Wyoming in 2012.

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