Caitlin Nye

Caitlin Nye (she/her) MSN, RN, NPD-BC, CHSE, CNE is the recipient of the Margaret Gould Tyson Scholarship. Caitlin is a PhD candidate at the State University of New York (SUNY) University at Buffalo School of Nursing. She holds a BSN from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing (2005) and an MSN in Nursing Education from Drexel University (2016). She is also a Clinical Assistant Professor at SUNY Upstate Medical University College of Nursing. Prior to her nursing education, Caitlin earned a BA in Religious Studies with a concentration in Feminist and Gender Studies from Haverford College. Caitlin’s journey through nursing exemplifies the flexibility and promise of the profession. While she originally entered the second-degree BSN program at Penn with the intent to pursue nurse-midwifery, Caitlin’s nursing career has included reproductive health care, oncology care, medical-surgical and emergency nursing, and a decade of nursing education practice in nursing professional development and academic settings.

Caitlin’s longest and most influential role so far has been as a Nurse Residency Program Coordinator (2014-2021). During her years in professional development, she became keenly aware of key elements of the “education-practice gap,” evidenced by the newly licensed registered nurses in the Nurse Residency Program. These nurses often entered practice underprepared to provide culturally safe care to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) populations. This realization led to her dissertation study, entitled LGBTQ+ Inclusion in Nursing Education, which focuses on faculty experiences with including—or excluding— LGBTQ+ health content. As a dedicated educator, a queer-identified person, and especially in the current political climate surrounding transgender rights as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education, this work is critically important.

At the SUNY University at Buffalo (UB), Caitlin has enjoyed mentorship and collaboration with faculty both within and outside the School of Nursing to develop her program of research. This began at the interview stage, with two faculty members who made her feel welcome and excited about conducting her research at UB; they have been her co-advisors during her time in the PhD program. She has published in such journals as Advances in Nursing Science, Nursing Inquiry, the Journal of LGBT Youth, and the Journal of Nursing Education, all with faculty and peer mentors. She is currently involved in several additional collaborative projects, including revision of a textbook chapter on LGBTQ+ health and nursing policy, as well helping to develop faculty training video modules to better prepare nursing faculty to deliver inclusive and comprehensive LGBTQ+ content.

Completing her doctorate with the support of the Margaret Gould Tyson Scholarship will allow Caitlin to continue to expand the scale and reach of her work, as well as laying the foundation for an ongoing, collaborative and participatory program of research with an emphasis on nursing education praxis. The goal of her longer-term program of research is to improve, expand, and diversify inclusion of LGBTQ+ health content in pre-licensure, undergraduate nursing curricula to better prepare newly licensed nurses to provide culturally safe care to LGBTQ+ populations.