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Ying Xue Installed as Loretta Ford Professor

  By Patrick Broadwater
  Friday, November 1, 2019

Ying Xue, DNSc, RN, whose research has helped national policies regarding how and where nurse practitioners can practice, was installed Thursday, Oct. 31 as the UR School of Nursing’s Loretta C. Ford Endowed Professor in Primary Care Nursing.

Ying Xue
From left, Dean Kathy Rideout, Loretta Ford, and Ying Xue celebrate Xue's installation as the Loretta C. Ford Endowed Professor in Primary Care Nursing.

Loretta Ford, EdD, RN, PNP, FAAN, FAANP, the former UR Nursing dean and co-creator of the nurse practitioner role, now 99 and living in Florida, returned to the school this week for a visit and was on hand to present Xue with the professorship medal.

In her acceptance remarks, Xue noted what an honor it is to receive the professorship named for Ford, a literal living legend in the field of nursing, and recalled other nurses who had an impact on her as a child and inspired her to pursue a career as a nurse researcher.

“Nurses touch people’s lives,” said Xue, an associate professor at the School of Nursing. “And that is the power of nursing.”

The overarching goal of Ying’s research is to develop empirical evidence to guide national policies to optimize the nursing workforce and to improve health care delivery and outcomes. Her current work focuses on examining the role of nurse practitioners in improving primary care delivery for vulnerable populations. Her research has been funded nationally and been published in top journals such as Health Affairs and the Journal of the American Medical Association

An associate professor at the School of Nursing, Ying earned her doctoral degree in nursing at Yale University and completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania. She joined the UR Nursing faculty in 2006 and was awarded the school’s Promising New Investigator Award in 2007. In 2008, she was one of only 15 junior faculty members nationwide selected to receive an inaugural Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholar award.

A former faculty diversity officer and co-chair of the Council for Diversity and Inclusiveness at the School of Nursing, Ying has demonstrated a commitment to issues of diversity and inclusiveness University-wide. She was recognized for her leadership in this area in 2015 with the Mary Dombeck Diversity Enhancement Faculty Award.

See photos from the installation on Oct. 31, 2019.

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