Dr. Paulette Burns, director of Nursing in the TCU Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences, was honored as one of the “Great 100 Nurses” for 2006 by the Texas Nurses Association, districts three and four, and the Dallas-Fort Worth Nurses Executives, at the 16th annual “Great 100 Nurses” awards ceremony in Dallas.

Most of Dr. Burns’ 35-year career in nursing has been in nursing education. Creating new opportunities in higher education for nurses has been her major focus. The TCU Master of Science in nursing program was launched in 2001, and an accelerated program for students with a previous degree began in 2004. The BSN program, established at TCU in 1946, has increased its student numbers by 40 percent under her leadership. She is a founding member of the DFW Deans and Directors of Nursing Organization, the DFW Nursing Workforce Collaborative sponsored by the DFW Hospital Council, and the Texas Organization for Baccalaureate and Graduate Nursing Education.

“We are very proud of Dr. Burns being named as ‘Great 100 nurses’,” said Dr. Keen-Payne, dean of the Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences. “She cares deeply about our students and provides high-quality nursing education so that our graduates are well prepared to provide quality care to patients and families.”

In 2005, Dr. Paulette Burns was also selected as a Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellow, an honor that is given to twenty nurse executives from across the country. The three-year Fellowship assists selected nurse executives as they learn to lead and shape the U.S. healthcare system of the future. Dr. Burns is focusing on developing nursing graduate programs that provide leadership to meet the diverse needs of the health care system, as well as creating nursing programs that will increase the number of graduating nursing students to ease the severe nursing shortage in North Texas.

Prior to coming to TCU in 2001, she was Director of the Tulsa campus of the University of Oklahoma College of Nursing. She received the Educator of the Year Award from the Oklahoma Nurses Association, the Nancy and Raymond Feldman Award for Excellence in Teaching from Rogers University, and awards in Excellence in Community Service and Excellence in Nursing Education from two chapters of Sigma Theta Tau International, the Honor Society in Nursing.

She was a member of the Tulsa Perinatal Coalition executive team who won a 4.5 million dollar federal grant to implement the Healthy Start Program, a program to decrease infant mortality through expansion of services for pregnant women and children in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is a registered nurse with a bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Maryland, a master’s degree in nursing from the University of Oklahoma, and a Ph.D. in nursing from Texas Woman’s University.

For more information on TCU’s Harris College of Nursing, visit http://www.nursing.tcu.edu/

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