Duke School of Nursing ABSN student, Erin Van Gessel, has been selected as a Margolis Scholar in the prestigious Duke-Margolis Scholars Program in Health Policy and Management. The program is for Duke students that demonstrate a strong interest in and commitment to a career in health policy and management, as well as leadership potential to improve health policy.

Van Gessel, who is a candidate for the ABSN class of May 2024, says she has always been drawn to public policy because of its ability to enact widespread change. Van Gessel previously worked in Washington DC on campaigns surrounding health care policy.

“Working on health care policy campaigns provided a great vantage point to learn about all the industry players and their various interests. That was when I identified nurses as, I would argue, the player most invested in patients’ wellbeing. It’s also when I decided to become a nurse and advocate for better health care policies ‘from the inside.’” 

Nurses make up the largest and most trusted workforce in the nation, spending long stretches of time with patients in acute care settings, making them uniquely attuned to patient needs. 

“Now that I’m in nursing school, I’m even more convinced nurses should be a driving force in health policy because of the care model nurses follow,” said Van Gessel.  “We are taught an almost foolproof problem-solving technique with the ‘ADPIE (Assess, Diagnose, Plan, Implement, Evaluate) Framework’ that can easily be applied to policy formation.” 

She notes additional qualities that make nurses uniquely suited for driving policy change, such as the emphasis on nurse-patient partnerships, which ensures care is collaborative and looks at multiple factors of a patient’s health. 

“I believe more collaborative care moves us away from any one-sided, pedantic, or siloed care exchanges, which perpetuate our nation’s current ‘sick care’ model,” Van Gessel adds.

Van Gessel says she is passionate about improving health education, access and quality and is eager to dive into advocacy around investing more in community health workers, wraparound health services, and technology such as artificial intelligence to help provide basic, preventative care. 

Named in honor of Robert Margolis, M.D., the founder of Duke-Margolis and a pioneer of innovative integrated care delivery models, the Margolis Scholars program provides promising students with the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to be the next generation of health care leaders.