Rhonda Sullivan

Nurse Pioneer & Leader in Wound & Ostomy Care

Rhonda Sullivan was born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1972. She was one of five African American students accepted to a nursing program of over 300 students. She graduated from nursing school in 1993 at the age of 19 and began her 28-year career as one of only two African American nurses in the emergency department of the inner-city hospital where she was born. In spite of humble beginnings and persistent adversity throughout her career, she has obtained seven degrees - DNP, PhD, MSN, MBA, CWON, LNCC, NE-BC, and CSPHA -which includes doctoral degrees in both nursing and business.

Three generations of nurses (left to right): Dr. Rhonda Sullivan with her mother Dorothy Woodward, RN and her daughter Jezsika Sullivan, BSN, RN, who graduated nursing school to enter the profession during COVID-19.

Dr. Sullivan is Board-Certified as a Nurse Executive, Wound-Ostomy Nurse, Legal Nurse Consultant, and Safe Patient Handling Associate. She is also the founder and Executive Director of iWOC Nursing Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2012 that works to positively impact wound and ostomy care disparities through free education, empowerment, and support. She is an international speaker, with a focus on pressure injury prevention and deep tissue pressure injury. Her current position as the Clinical Director of Wound Care Marketing for a global medical device company has expanded her scope of influence, affords her the opportunity to operate in her passion for elevating and expanding the scope of nurses through active mentorship and fostering a spirit of inquiry. Her vision is to cultivate change agents, challenge the status quo of everything that hinders human-centered healthcare, and to advocate for nothing less than excellence in nursing, as a bridge to high quality patient-centered care.

View Dr. Sullivan’s Nurses You Should Know video here where she shares her hope for a more inclusive future for the nursing profession.

Sources

We sourced the above information from https://iwocnurse.org, LinkedIn, and from Dr. Sullivan.

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

• American Association for the History of Nursing to attend monthly webinars on topics of nursing history, view the calendar here.
• Nursing CLIO to engage with historians and scholars committed to deep work around historical accuracy in healthcare and nursing.

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.

Support & Advocate

• National Coalition for Ethnic Minority Nurse Association to stay engaged with topics relevant to nurses of color.

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