 
Donna Diers |
of its former dean
This month, the Yale School of Nursing will bid farewell to Donna Diers, the Annie W. Goodrich Professor of Nursing and former dean of the school, who has had a distinguished career in nursing and health care.
To mark her retirement, a luncheon ceremony honoring Diers will take place on Saturday, June 8, 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. at the School of Nursing.
A strong advocate for nurses and her profession, Diers has said that "while nurses are the most important group in the health care system, they are also the most invisible." Her writing and research have done much to increase public awareness of the work of nurses and their potential influence on individual patients, as well as on systems of care.
Diers earned her M.S.N. at Yale in 1964. Her early work in nursing research in the 1960s was pioneering for its emphasis on questions of clinical significance that would make a difference in the practice of nurses and the care of patients. Her 1979 book "Research in Nursing Practice" was the first to describe methods for clinical nursing research. Her more than 150 articles have appeared in health and medical journals, The New York Times and other prominent publications.
During her tenure as dean of the School of Nursing from 1972 to 1984, Diers significantly expanded the school's master's degree programs and extended its clinical influence by establishing faculty joint ap-pointments in many of the major clinical agencies in the Greater New Haven area. She led the effort to implement the first post-baccalaureate graduate entry program into nursing in the nation -- a model of nursing education that has revolutionized the profession.
After she retired from the deanship of the School of Nursing, Diers joined the University's Health Systems Management Group, which founded Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs), now used as the basis for hospital payments by the Medicare program in the United States and adopted in many other countries. Her most recent research has focused on the use of large hospital data sets to better understand the operations of unit-level nursing care and quality of care and outcomes for patients. She has consulted internationally about the uses of such data and its impact upon policy.
Diers is a lecturer in the Health Management Program of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health and holds a post as senior clinical coordinator in the Finance Department at Yale-New Haven Hospital. She will maintain these positions after her retirement from the School of Nursing. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Technology and at Monash University Faculty of Nursing in Melbourne.
The School of Nursing has honored Diers with a Distinguished Alumna Award and its Anie W. Goodrich Award for excellence in teaching.
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