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LISTEN: New graduate program helps professional nurses advance leadership skills

A new Master of Science in nursing and interprofessional leadership in the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing was developed to offer professional nurses the opportunity to advance their health care leadership skills, according to a new Voices of UMass Chan podcast with Mary Antonelli, RN, PhD, MPH, program director and assistant professor of nursing.

“This program really focuses on communication, team dynamics, innovation in thinking and improvement science, as well as provides [students] practice to reinforce the skills that they’re learning and the knowledge to actually apply what they learned,” Dr. Antonelli said.

The program’s first cohort includes five students.

“As a nurse you are working with a lot of other professions. And so part of the enticement of this (program) is that I can learn more about how to function in a team, how to be a leader in a team, and how to use my voice on a team, how to make a difference,” said Melissa Brown, RN, case manager at Boston Children’s Hospital and a student in the new master’s program.

“We talk a lot about perspective, building relationships and how everybody’s perspective plays into things. It’s just pulling everything together for me in just such a short period of time,” said Sharon Rudinski, RN, a staff nurse in the emergency room at UMass Memorial Medical Center and a student in the new program.

Learn more about the program and the application process here: https://www.umassmed.edu/gsn/academics/masters-program/

Listen to the full Voices of UMass Chan podcast episode at umassmed.edu/news/voices. Subscribe through SoundCloud, Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.