Andy Phillips enjoys challenging the status quo.
Shortly after becoming a nurse in 2008, he realized that many of his new nursing colleagues in New York had established procedures that ran contrary to what he had just learned while earning his degree at Columbia University’s School of Nursing. Although the alternatives worked well, they didn’t align with evidence-based practice at that time.
“I was coming from a long business background where if you saw something, you spoke up to address it,” said Dr. Phillips, who previously had spent over 20 years as an actuarial consultant working with collectively bargained pension and health funds. “So I did.” He was shortly named co-chair of a new quality improvement committee tasked with introducing an evidence-based culture into nursing practice.
“It was an important goal, especially with the busy working environment of nurses focused on the care of patients and the limited time available for research,” said Phillips. These efforts to achieve a change in nursing culture encouraged him to pursue a PhD in nursing informatics, focused on examining methods to evaluate change in health care systems.
He will now combine his business acumen, negotiating skills, data collection, and teaching as the first director of nursing research at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Network.
The first step, he says, is for nurses to see themselves differently. “Nursing can and needs to be more than about just treating patients at the bedside,” said Phillips, an assistant professor of nursing at the MGH Institute since 2013, who will continue teaching. “We want them to embrace research and bring their knowledge to the forefront, because they are the ones on the front lines of what works and what doesn’t.”
Maureen Banks, Spaulding’s chief nursing and operating officer, agrees. “While research has been a core element to Spaulding’s mission for many years, our nurses have not been as active in research as possible,” says Dr. Banks, who earned a Doctor of Nursing Practice from the Institute in 2019. “We have done a significant amount of work throughout the years to utilize evidence-based practice, so Andy’s role will really enable us to create the framework needed to have our staff nurses integrate research into practice.”
Leveraging the interdisciplinary nature of rehabilitation care, Phillips believes, provides an environment that can lead to new areas of nursing research and participation. “Scholarship and research are often done by a small core of people who have a passion for it. Bringing this passion to all of nursing is the real challenge of culture change.”
In the meantime, Phillips will take his message across the Spaulding system, meeting nurses where they work to encourage them to take that first research step. “It’s something that’s going to take nurturing, and that’s fine,” he says. “I’ve always found it fun to be a part of trying to change things to make them better.”