Kellie Bryant
Assistant Dean of Clinical Affairs & Simulation
Dr. Kellie Bryant was inspired to enter nursing and follow in her grandmother’s footsteps after hearing her stories and the challenges Black students faced to access nursing education and employment during her grandmother’s generation. Dr. Bryant received her Associate degree in Nursing right after high school from Hudson Valley Community College in 1997 and went on to receive her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the State University of New York, Stonybrook. She graduated as a women’s health nurse practitioner in 2001, but found it challenging to start as a nurse practitioner “without experience.”
I remember graduating and not being able to find a job, it was hard because they all wanted you to have experience — how are you supposed to have experience if you’ve never worked as a nurse?
Dr. Bryant worked at first as a registered nurse women’s health float pool, taught as an adjunct professor, and was able to find a part-time nurse practitioner position. She held a women’s health nurse practitioner role for almost a decade at Jamaica Hospital, but during her time as an adjunct professor, she realized that she wanted to pivot career into academia leadership. She pursued her Doctorate in Nursing from Case Western Reserve University while teaching and working as a nurse practitioner. In 2009 she became the Director of Simulation Learning and Assistant Clinical Professor at New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing. In 2016 she became an executive director and assistant professor at Columbia University School of Nursing and was promoted to Assistant Dean of Clinical Affairs and Simulation in May, 2021, where she oversees the simulation program for undergraduate and graduate nursing students.
One thing I’m especially passionate about now is how do we provide a curriculum where our graduates are going to be advocates for health equity? How do we provide educational activities which teaches us about our biases and teaches us ways we can advocate for our patients?
Dr. Bryant has also served as a Regional Nursing Education Consultant for the nursing textbook publisher Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, where she provided best teaching practices and innovative ideas for educators throughout the country since 2013. In 2019 Dr. Bryant also served as a principal investigator for a $1.86 million dollar grant for using simulation to improve infection prevention and patient safety, and continues to serve as a principal investigator role for subsequent simulation lab grants. Read and view her experience returning as a frontline clinician in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic here.
View Dr. Bryant’s Nurses You Should Know Video here.
Sources
The information above was sourced from Dr. Kellie Bryant and LinkedIn.
Learn More
To learn more about inclusion in nursing and be part of the national discussion to address racism in nursing, check out and share the following resources:
Know Your History
- Nursing CLIO to engage with historians and scholars committed to deep work around historical accuracy in healthcare and nursing.
- American Association for the History of Nursing to attend monthly webinars on topics of nursing history, view the calendar here.
Examine Bias
- NurseManifest to attend live zoom sessions with fellow nurses on nursing’s overdue reckoning on racism or to sign their pledge.
- Breaking Bias in Healthcare, an online course created by scientist Anu Gupta, to learn how bias is related to our brain’s neurobiology and can be mitigated with mindfulness.
- Revolutionary Love Learning Hub provides free tools for learners and educators to use love as fuel towards ourselves, our opponents, and to others so that we can embody a world where we see no strangers.
Support & Advocate
- National Coalition for Ethnic Minority Nurse Association to stay engaged with topics relevant to nurses of color.
Help us paint the internet with nursing’s diverse origin stories. Follow this Medium publication, NursesYouShouldKnow on Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook, or @KnowNurses on Twitter to share and re-post our articles far and wide.
