For Dr. Brittany Burke, the Post-Master’s Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) online program at Northern Kentucky University is about students making connections in a nontraditional learning environment while being empowered to become multi-faceted leaders.
Dr. Burke is the system director for Norton Healthcare’s Institute for Education and Development in Louisville, Kentucky and a 2018 graduate of NKU’s DNP program. She joined the online DNP faculty in 2020, bringing a remarkable perspective to teaching, helping her connect with students. She’s known for her ability to anticipate questions and concerns, addressing them without students having to ask.
When she joined NKU’s faculty, Dr. Burke was given the option to choose the courses she wanted to teach. Recalling the growth, engagement, and fulfillment she experienced as a student, two immediately stood out: Quality Improvement Strategies and Leadership in Organizations and Systems.
“I remember what it was like to be a student in those courses; I remember the questions asked, the novice understanding of some concepts,” she said. “As a nurse leader, I value the importance of those questions and application of the concepts, and therefore work to bring real-world examples to why implementation, execution, and evaluation are so important to not just best practice, but to overall leadership.”
As an advanced certified nurse executive, Dr. Burke’s standing as an industry leader also gives her the insight required to keep course curricula fresh and relevant—and to keep students engaged with the trends and innovations defining the future of healthcare.
The “Student Whisperer” Connects Industry and Academia
Dr. Burke’s experience teaching, guiding, and mentoring nurses began long before she joined the faculty at NKU. She began working with RNs as a clinical educator in obstetrics for Norton Healthcare in 2011. “In my educator role, I really found my passion for student growth and student development,” Dr. Burke said.
In 2016, she became a nurse manager and developed the organization’s Student Nurse Apprenticeship Program (SNAP), the first program of its kind in the United States. There, she earned the nickname “Student Whisperer” for her intuitive approach to working with students transitioning to RNs by increasing their readiness for licensed practice. Her years serving in SNAP helped her earn the director role for Norton Healthcare’s Center for Nursing Practice in 2020, and her current executive position in 2023.
At each step in her ascent to leadership, Dr. Burke has continued to serve as a champion for students, building bridges between academia and industry.
“I have the pleasure of focusing on external development, partnerships, collaborations, affiliations, clinical placement, student placement, and student employment, for nursing and many other disciplines,” she said. “I get to live my passion every single day. It’s an amazing role, and I’m so thrilled to serve the nursing profession in this way.”
She now brings this same enthusasm to her teaching in NKU’s online DNP program. Though students don’t always interact with her face-to-face in a conventional classroom, she constantly evolves assignments and course content to maximize one-on-one communication and the development of personalized goals. This helps ensure she makes a meaningful connection with each rising doctoral student.
“We assesed some of the traditional assignments and said, ‘Okay, we are a virtual program, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t connect with our students.’” she said, adding that NKU builds a network to help facilitate each student’s success. In the past year, NKU created the DNP Virtual Practicum Work Room, where students can schedule time to meet with Dr. Burke for a one-on-one session to review activities, practice strategies, implementation challenges, leadership scenarios, avoiding pitfalls, and how to move from novice to expert in nurse leadership.
“NKU assigns someone specifically to your doctorate project, and you have a day-to-day preceptor who knows you—this triangle is exceptional,” she said, noting the level of support students receive at NKU is what made the DNP program attractive to her as a student. As a faculty member, she now carries on that tradition of excellence. “We continue to intentionally work to not miss the connection” she explained.”The connection of people, the connection of impact, the connection of project.”
Building the Lattice to Leadership
With more than 17 years of healthcare experience—from her nursing school days, when she worked as both a secretary and patient care associate, to teaching in NKU’s doctorate program today—Dr. Burke has a deep understanding of how the road to nurse leadership looks different for everyone.
“It took me many roles, many opportunities of advancement to get where I am today,” she said. “When you talk about the variety of avenues for nurses, especially in today’s world, we call it a lattice. It’s not a ladder, it’s not a vertical up and down. It’s lateral, it’s vertical, it’s diagonal, it’s the direction that you want your career to go. How can you be the best version of you?”
It’s paramount to Dr. Burke that students have access to strong leaders who will ask challenging questions about their nursing trajectory. She has met with numerous students and nurses early in their careers who are following a direct path, many times someone else’s dream, instead of exploring their dream, gaining individualized experiences, knowledge, and expertise resulting in rewarding opportunities for both personal and professional growth.
Dr. Burke asks the students in her leadership course to reflect on their goals and whether their approach is meeting their objectives. If they are having issues achieving those objectives, she helps them implement a revised strategy by outlining how to pivot and try again. “As a leader, sometimes you have a goal and it falls short. That’s okay,” she said. “But you can’t be paralyzed by, ‘I can’t fail, I can’t fail.’ You can fail, safely, but we don’t quit. You don’t stop. You reflect on what didn’t work, you take the win for what did, and you create the next step.”
Dr. Burke recognizes that advanced practice RNs are invaluable to healthcare systems, but she also wants to see more of them become leaders in the C-suite—nurse executives with business acumen making complex staffing and budgeting decisions, leading conversations in finance, operations, and interdepartmental collaboration—because that’s the future of nursing.
She says NKU’s online DNP program helps prepare nurses for a leadership role. “The beautiful thing about the DNP degree is it brings in business practices. In years past, we, as a profession, have left those practices to other business disciplines to lead, and left nursing to only care for people, but as nurse leaders we need to do both, we need to care for people directly and indirectly,” Dr. Burke explained.
“I care for people now more than I ever did,” she said, speaking of her own leadership journey in the healthcare industry. “I’m responsible for 500-plus employees who provide direct patient care. I’m responsible for a budget that keeps them employed so they can provide care and take care of their family. To have leaders at the table that are humbled by that responsibility—but also live in that responsibility—helps move healthcare forward.”
Through her teaching and experience, Dr. Burke offers NKU online DNP students the knowledge, perspectives, and skills required for them to achieve their career goals and become effective, intuitive leaders.
