Interim Dean Betty Rambur reimagines URI’s College of Nursing
New Interim Dean for College of Nursing, Betty Rambur, aims to add technology and business into the college. PHOTO CREDIT: BettyRambur.com
Betty Rambur, former Routhier Endowed Chair for Practice and professor of nursing at the University of Rhode Island, has been named interim dean of the College of Nursing.
A national scholar and leader in health policy and health reform, Rambur has focused her work on population health, reducing disparities and waste in treatment, cost containment and alternative care models, according to her. Her research as the Routhier Endowed Chair for Practice centers around these issues of payment and system reform in healthcare.
As interim dean, Rambur hopes to make the “healthcare experience more seamless” and allow students to “really see themselves as iterate innovators and solution generators.”
“Everything is moving so fast in healthcare that you can’t really sit back,” Rambur said. She said she views her position as interim dean as a “bridge between past and future.”
Barbara E. Wolfe, former dean of the College of Nursing and current provost and executive vice president of academic affairs, believes that “curriculum always changes because life changes… The patient needs change and this society needs change.” Rambur’s continued research and policy has the goal of encouraging this change.
Although she is not going to be a candidate for the permanent position of dean within URI’s College of Nursing, Rambur has plans for the future of healthcare education both within and outside of the Kingston Campus.
“We all could tell you about the problems [in healthcare]. But when we see the problems, we need to ask [about] the solution. [Students] need the agency and authority to think about that,” she said.
Rambur said that her position as interim dean of URI’s College of Nursing is “sort of the living logo of the institution.” This involves bringing the skills and talents of the University’s students, faculty and staff to the public through scholarship and curriculum enhancement, as well as aligning with different accreditors to look at where the University is going, according to Rambur.
Aiming to combine technology and business into the College of Nursing, Rambur said that she has conducted research on alternative payment models, telehealth nursing and competency-based workforce redesigned. In the position as interim dean, Rambur hopes to make the “inherently stressful job of being a nurse” less stressful, through scholarship, consolidation and care redesign.
Rambur believes that her previous leadership experience in the fields of nursing and health sciences contributed to her appointment as interim dean of URI’s College of Nursing.
Before coming to Rhode Island in 2016, Rambur was the founding dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at the University of Vermont (UVM), and held previous positions at UVM including dean of the School of Allied Health Sciences and dean of the School of Nursing, according to her Curriculum Vitae (CV). Rambur’s CV also stated that she was a Division of Nursing Chairperson at the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota.
In addition to her academic appointments, Rambur has been on the South County Health Board of Trustees in Wakefield, Rhode Island, since 2016. As the current secretary of the organization, Rambur has continued her research into healthcare redesign and telehealth nursing.
The interim dean stated that she has written two editions of her book, entitled “Health Care Financing, Economics, and Policy For Nurses: A Foundational Guide,” published by Springer Publishing Inc. in 2015 and 2022. The foundational guide focuses on reconceptualizing payment models, including value-based payments, to “fully support nurses” and encourage “innovation” in healthcare, according to the second edition.
By explaining the current systems of healthcare in the context of economics and policy, Rambur hopes to develop and redesign care systems that “maximize the health of the individual family, [but] cause less strain.”
Another goal of Ramburs is to encourage exploration into the business of healthcare in the classroom. According to Rambur, it is estimated that one-third to one-half of healthcare is “unnecessary or wasteful” due to overtreatment, causing harm and expense – a “burden” of which younger generations will carry.
By ensuring that curriculum is routinely revised, Wolfe views the act of “moving forward” as “meeting the needs of the greater society.” Rambur has hopes of combining technology in curriculum, with the introduction of application and chatbots, in order to lessen the current system’s financial waste.
Rambur believes that by establishing a contemporary nursing curriculum making sure students understand problems within the healthcare system, today’s students will “lessen the strain.” In her profile by the American Nurses Association (ANA), Rambur, a member of the association, explained how the current system of pay-for-service is counteractive to the goal of reaching upstream social determinants of health.
Encouraging nurses to understand patient care through a lens of economics and financing, Rambur claimed in the APA profile that “our nation simply can’t afford healthcare as expensive as ours that delivers far behind on quality measures compared to other wealthy nations.”
Rambur is currently writing her second book with the goal of making more challenging aspects of healthcare “reader friendly.” This includes looking at case studies and mock trials to try and find solutions, according to Rambur.
The interim dean aims to reiterate this problem-solving approach to URI students through a master’s entry program. This program “on the horizon” is a way for people to receive a graduate degree at the master’s level in nursing, but obtain an undergraduate degree in something other than nursing beforehand, according to Rambur. She believes that by cultivating a diverse pool of students in nursing–with undergraduate degrees from Russian to Finance–there will be a new “richness” in the field.
After she pointed to a small owl statue on her desk, Rambur stated that, by working with other academic units, business in particular, the College of Nursing could “fly with two wings.”
The URI Board of Trustees has not yet started the search for a permanent dean of the College of Nursing, but Wolfe stated that an international search will start “soon.”
“I really want to line up everything in an even more wonderful package for the next team,” Rambur said. “I want to get back to my health policy work. But I think that there’s a lot I can do in a short time.”