Former nursing dean grateful for time at MGH Institute, says being here “has been a gift”

Elaine Tagliareni began gravitating towards a nursing career when she was very young. 

“I think it’s being the middle child,” reasoned Tagliareni. “My youngest sister, Pam, is so much younger, so I ended up being the babysitter, the calmer, the one who was second in charge. I was always sort of the caretaker.” 

Now, with retirement beckoning on July 6, Tagliareni is turning to her favorite book from childhood, Stuart Little, to once again guide her future. 

“The book ends with a message that has stayed with me through all these years,” Tagliareni shared at May’s MGH Institute retirement party. “Stuart climbed into his car and started up the road that headed north. As he peeked ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the waves seemed very long, but the sky was bright, and he felt somehow that he was headed in the right direction.”

That’s the approach Tagliareni, a nursing professor and director of faculty development at the MGH Institute, has taken for much of her career. While she has only been at the Institute since 2018, it’s not the length of time but what she did when she was here, that’s impactful. 

As dean, she steered School of Nursing students and faculty through the tumultuous Black Lives Matter movement, and the COVID pandemic, which turned higher education upside down. 

“It’s always good as a leader to come in during a crisis because you can either solve it or fall on your face, but most times you can pretty much solve it,” said Tagliareni. “And then you are a team, and that is what happened.”

The key, said Tagliareni, was relationship centered leadership. During COVID, the Institute helped staff Boston Hope, the 1,000-bed medical center created at the Boston Convention and Exposition Center to treat COVID-19 patients, including the homeless. It was overseen by Jeanette Ives Erickson, chief nurse emerita at Massachusetts General Hospital, and chair of the MGH Institute’s Board of Trustees. 

“Boston Hope was a powerful experience for our students because they were working with limited resources,” recalled Tagliareni. “Boston Hope was getting so many of the patients from Massachusetts General Hospital still needing acute care. We also completely shifted our practicum around to go around the clock at Spaulding Cambridge, because that facility needed help too.”

Ives Erickson then asked the MGH Institute nursing students to participate in immunization distribution at Assembly Row.

“I’m grateful for that relationship with MGH and Jeanette. COVID was such a good example of that kind of servant approach to leadership because it was being with the faculty as often as I could on Zoom; three times a week I had open office hours and met with them just to keep them up to date, to know how much we appreciated their work because we were so isolated.”

The result was every nursing student graduated on time with their clinicals, a far cry from most schools. 

Tagliareni is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, the highest honor bestowed on a nurse from the world’s most prestigious nursing organization, and in 2022 was named a Living Legend by the American Academy of Nursing - Massachusetts Chapter — lofty accomplishments she wasn’t even thinking of when starting out. 

After earning her nursing degree at Georgetown University, Tagliareni became a staff nurse at Georgetown University Hospital which was followed by a faculty position at the University of California San Francisco School of Nursing, where she earned her master’s. A nurse position at a VA hospital followed by a health care coordinator at a nonprofit preceded what was perhaps Tagliareni’s most satisfying role — teaching at two community colleges. 

“I was in Washington for college during the height of the Vietnam War, and I felt the work at the community college was an extension of all that protesting I did,” recalled Tagliareni. “The social justice to work with students whose life experiences were just so different from mine.” 

Tagliareni first taught at Greenfield Community College in Greenfield, Mass. for four years then moved on to the Community College of Philadelphia in North Philadelphia, where she would stay for 26 years. 

“About 75% of the students were from minority backgrounds, the average age was 29 to 32,” noted Tagliareni. “I taught them nursing and, in the process, they moved to the middle class.”

From there, it was on to the presidency of the National League for Nursing (NLN), the oldest nursing organization in the United States, representing more than 40,000 faculty from its member schools. Prior to her presidency at NLN, Tagliareni was its chief program officer, where she supported an inclusive attitude for all levels of nursing. 

When you add in her roles as principal investigator and co-principal investigator on foundation and NIH grants with awards of more than $4 million, Tagliareni thought she had done it all. Then in spring 2018, while attending an Institute for Healthcare Improvement cocktail party, she ran into Paula Milone-Nuzzo, with whom she had worked when Milone-Nuzzo was dean of nursing at Penn State. The now-president of the MGH Institute asked Tagliareni to come over help with some leadership programs. The following fall, Tagliareni began working in the Doctor of Nursing Practice program in the School of Nursing. Less than a year after starting at the Institute, Tagliareni was named dean. 

“I just feel like being here has been a gift,” reflected Tagliareni. “I've loved having a leadership role and hopefully making a difference in helping our community be healthy and thrive, and that's been a gift that I didn't anticipate would be part of my journey. So, I really appreciate being here. It’s incredible here.”

While she is retiring, Tagliareni isn’t going anywhere, at least not yet. There’s the course she’ll be teaching this fall, and the volunteering she hopes to pursue. 

“As a nurse, you do have skills that that are useful to individuals related to triage or counseling,” noted Tagliareni. “And so, I've started to explore ways that I can be a volunteer and make a commitment to the Boston community.”

Whatever path is taken, the direction will always be north, as Tagliareni reminded the audience during her address at the Retirement Party while referencing that favorite book from childhood. 

“Stuart had one more thing to say about that journey north. He said, ‘There's something about north, something that sets it apart from all other directions.’ Well, that's the way I look at it. I'd rather expect that from now on, I shall be traveling North until the end of my days.’ Tagliareni concluded, “Like Stuart, I plan on continuing to head north, and because of all of you, I do so with a full heart and much gratitude. Thank you.”

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