BY LESLIE GARISTO PFAFF
Linda Flynn’s calling arrived in the form of a book—specifically, a Little Golden Book titled Nurse Nancy. It came with a packet of candy pills and a Band-Aid, which the five-year-old thought “was just the coolest thing.” But even more impressive was the book’s plot, in which Nancy’s friend takes a tumble and skins his knee. Decades later, Flynn can still quote the line that followed the fall: “But Nancy was a nurse, and she knew what to do.” “I said to myself, ‘Well, that’s what I want to be. People get hurt, and I want to help them get back up.’”
Throughout her 52-year career, including 30 years as a practicing nurse (many of those years in community health), Linda Flynn, PhD, RN, FAAN, has been doing just that, not only helping patients get back up but also elevating the profession of nursing. She will retire on August 19, leaving a legacy of excellence in research, leadership, and patient care. At Rutgers School of Nursing, she has served as director of research, senior associate dean of nursing science, interim dean, and in 2020, after a national search, dean. As a leader, Flynn has advanced the field of nursing and promoted the importance of nurses, in health care and in academia.
An undergraduate drama class propelled her onto that path. “My drama professor had a PhD, but my nursing professor didn’t,” she recalls. “I thought, ‘Hmm, this is problematic.’ So very early on I was on the bandwagon that if you’re going to teach nursing at a university, you need to have a doctorate.”
Teaching came naturally to Flynn, named National League for Nursing’s Nurse Educator of the Year in 2022. “When I was a young staff RN,” she remembers, “faculty on our unit would tell me that I was very good with their students and should consider teaching.” She volunteered at community organizations teaching new parent classes, and realized she loved teaching, and also realized, “I could make a bigger impact by educating future nurses.” A proud Rutgers alumna, she went on to get an MS in community health and a PhD in nursing research.
Her PhD reflects another passion: “I fell in love with research as an undergraduate,” says Flynn, named to Stanford University’s World’s Top 2% Nurse-Scientists list. Her groundbreaking research, concerned with how nurse staffing and organizational culture affect patient outcomes, has had an impact on federal policy.
She’s also helped support fellow researchers at the School of Nursing, contracting with acclaimed nurse-researcher Shirley Moore, PhD, RN, FAAN, to consult with faculty; hiring two manuscript editors; and instituting workshops on statistics and manuscript writing.
Her initiatives have allowed the School of Nursing to serve more students and hire more—and more experienced—faculty. She founded a faculty fellowship program to help solve a longstanding conundrum: “Nursing schools only like to hire faculty with teaching experience,” she notes. “But how do you get teaching experience if you can’t get hired?” The program mentors highly qualified clinicians for a year so they can gain the experience they lack.
Flynn also has had a long commitment to advancing diversity and creating a more equitable health care system; she wrote the proposal for the Center for Health Equity and Systems Research that opened at the School of Nursing this year. Under her leadership the school has gained top honors including a No. 5 ranking for its doctor of nursing practice program from U.S. News & World Report 2024.
Retirement won’t be stopping Flynn from elevating patients and nurses. She’d like to volunteer at Rutgers and continue teaching as an adjunct. She’ll be needed. Contemplating the future of the field, she says that “nursing is becoming more complex every day, from infection prevention and epidemic control to acute-care hospitalization.”
She sees increasing complexity as a good thing. “I envision multiple opportunities for nurses in the future,” she says. Thanks to her vision and leadership, graduates of the School of Nursing will be uniquely prepared to rise to those challenges and seize the opportunities they offer.