Nursing’s Pusey-Reid and Hoyt to Be Inducted into American Academy of Nursing

It has almost become a rite of summer; the American Academy of Nursing announces its Class of Fellows and someone from the MGH Institute of Health Professions is on the list. This year was no exception. 

Last Thursday, the Academy announced that Distinguished Teaching Associate Professor Eleonor Pusey-Reid, DNP, RN, Med, and Associate Professor of Nursing Alex Hoyt, PhD, RN, were named to the Class of 2025 New Fellows. This is the fourth consecutive year a faculty member has been accepted by the most prestigious nursing organization in the world. 

“I’m honored,” said Pusey-Reid. “I didn't expect it, largely because I hadn’t been thinking much about the cumulative impact of my career.”  

“It’s hard to put into words what this means,” said Hoyt. “I’ve been teaching and researching for 25 year and while being a Fellow has been in the back of my mind, it’s not something I ever gave much thought to, until recently. I’m thankful for the mentors and sponsors who encouraged me to apply. This is a real thrill.” 

The newest Fellows Class represent 42 states, the District of Columbia, and 12 countries. Pusey-Reid and Hoyt made the cut after a rigorous process that includes seven layers of evaluation before their submissions are even voted on. Their inclusion brings to 14 the number of IHP faculty members who are Fellows in the Academy.

“I cannot emphasize enough at this pivotal time in history the vital importance of recognizing this extraordinary and sizeable group of nurse leaders. With rich and varied backgrounds from practice, policy, research, entrepreneurship, and academia, they have been instrumental in using nursing’s holistic approach to improve the health of patients and communities throughout the world,” said Academy President Linda D. Scott, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FADLN, FNAP, FAAN, in the Academy’s announcement of its 2025 class. “Induction into the Academy represents the highest honor in nursing. Earning the Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing credential is a prestigious recognition of one’s accomplishments and signifies the power of nursing to transform health and enact positive outcomes.”

Being named a Fellow is the pinnacle of the nursing profession; not only does it speak volumes of one’s career and accomplishments, but also of one’s impact in healthcare.

For Hoyt, that impact has been research at the intersection of public policy and professional policy. 

“In the research I do, it's not always a good news story, but rather, showing the difference between what the profession said that it wanted to have happen and what is actually happening,” noted Hoyt. “I typically have lessons for regulators, accreditors, certifiers, educators that summarize the implications of this research.” 

For Pusey-Reid, it’s been international work, supporting marginalized students, researching dark skin representation in textbooks, and dark skin tone assessment. 

When asked what the Fellowship means to her, Dr. Pusey-Reid emphasized the responsibility of leadership. “I’m thinking not about what this platform can do for me, but how I can use it to advance equity in patient care and nursing education.”

As Dean of Nursing at Universidad Adventista de Centro América in Costa Rica, she helped develop a cross-border articulation agreement that enabled dozens of BSN-prepared nurses to gain recognition in Panama, bolstering workforce development and access to care in the region. At the MGH Institute, she has been a leading force in faculty development and inclusive pedagogy, including efforts to address racial microaggressions in the classroom and support marginalized students.

In the area of marginalized students, Pusey-Reid’s and colleagues research on addressing racial microaggressions led to School of Nursing changes in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020. 

Her nationally recognized research on the underrepresentation of dark skin tones in foundational nursing textbooks is reshaping how educators approach clinical assessment, skin tone variation, and equity-driven care. Her 2021 article in the American Journal of Nursing became one of the most downloaded in the journal’s 40-year history. This work has led to invitations for national presentations and her appointment to the Board of Directors of the National Pressure Injury Advisory Panel (NPIAP), where she now helps inform international skin assessment guidelines, inclusive of all skin tones.

“Many students and clinicians have never been taught how pressure injuries or skin conditions appear on darker skin,” she explained. “Textbooks historically present one standard of visible skin tone. That gap in education puts patients at risk. My work addresses that.”

For Hoyt, scholarship, teaching, and service have been the three primary facets of his career, and there have been significant contributions on all three. The most public facing has been the research. 

“I'm certainly proud of the research that I've done and being able to make policy recommendations based upon evidence,” noted Hoyt. 

The nationally known policy scholar has utilized advanced quantitative methods, nationally representative data, and boundary-spanning frameworks to provide nursing’s governance network of regulators, accreditors, certifiers, and educators with evaluations of current policies and recommendations. The impact of his scholarship is evidenced by citations, invited presentations to policymaking organizations, and multiple best poster commendations at interdisciplinary conferences. 

He has been asked to serve on committees addressing educational standards and the nursing workforce and to review for several high impact journals. He has developed healthcare policy courses and doctoral curricula by applying findings from his research on the impact of nurse practitioners’ degrees; implemented educational tools he helped develop; and co-authored publications with students. Hoyt’s contributions benefit policymakers in nursing’s governance network as well as policy stakeholders including healthcare facilities, advanced practice nurses, and the patients for whom they care.

“I'm also very proud of my teaching and the contribution I've made to students’ education, both as an advisor to students — really working very closely with individual students on their projects in the DNP program — and for a long time before that, in the master's program where I was teaching a healthcare policy course that taught people about the health system,” observed Hoyt.

Hoyt says the most invisible work to the public is the service work — reviewing research articles and suggesting better ways to present studies so that they are more impactful. Only the editor and researcher see his comments, yet Hoyt says, “I feel like I've made great contributions in the discipline. Being able to say, ‘Here are the strengths, and here are the ways in which the work that you've done would have a greater impact if you did X, Y, and Z, or if you thought about like this.” 

Pusey-Reid and Hoyt will be formally inducted in October during the Academy’s annual Health Policy Conference in Washington, DC. 

“I recognize that it's a great honor,” summarized Hoyt. “More than that, I feel like it's a fantastic opportunity to work with other experts in the field and to have a platform for policy recommendations. I'm looking forward to getting into it.”

Pusey-Reid is also looking forward to building on the impact of her 35-year career. 

“What I'm doing is helping to change the way we care for more people because there is a divide in care when it comes to color,” assessed Pusey-Reid. “I’m thinking, how I can use this platform, getting into the Academy, to advance the change that we need to make in our educational material more effective for clinicians?” 

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