Profiles in Health Care Leadership: Donna M. Policastro, RNP

“I don’t think leaders are born. They evolve.”

After over three decades of service, Donna M. Policastro has evolved as one of Rhode Island’s most vocal advocates for women and nurses.  In the 1990s, Ms. Policastro joined a band of fellow nurse practitioners who successfully advocated for third party reimbursement and prescriptive privileges. Her leadership in that effort and her concern for the interests of other nurses led her to join the Rhode Island State Nurses Association. First active as a board member and later as President and then Executive Director, Ms. Policastro has championed nurses and their causes not just in the state of Rhode Island but also on Capitol Hill. As Treasurer of the Board of Trustees of the American Nursing Association, she recently testified before the Ways and Means Committee on health care reform.

But before she became an advocate and a leader, Ms. Policastro began her career as one of Rhode Island’s first nurse practitioners, advocating for women’s reproductive health, first in a nonprofit health care system and then in her own private practice

For nurses looking to evolve into leadership positions, Ms. Policastro suggests first joining their local professional associations. “They often serve as launching pads to leadership,” she says. “Being a good leader is really about partnership, coalition building and negotiations,” and Ms. Policastro says such organizations provide aspiring leaders with several opportunities to serve on committees and hone their collaborative skills.

Ms. Policastro, who herself has served a variety of organizations, including AARP’s Executive Council, the Senior Agenda Coalition, and the YMCA of Northern Rhode Island, suggests nurses consider volunteering for boards beyond the nursing and health care. “They should look outside the profession for anything they might want to take a leadership position on,” she says, including chambers of commerce, rotary clubs, or corporations.

Most importantly, nurses should map out a plan for their own career development. “We always refer to organizational strategic plans in meetings,” she says. “But I don’t always think we sit down and articulate plans for ourselves. We can visualize ourselves in the boardrooms of Fidelity or Bank of America. If that’s our vision, we need to create a plan to get there.” To that end, she was one of the organizers and panelist at the Rhode Island Nurses on Board Forum held June 4th, 2010.