Feeling frustrated, scared, and alone, Sara Hart once tried to leave the nursing profession. Instead, Hart, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Utah College of Nursing, got curious, dove deep and is now changing healthcare for the better. 鈥淭hese are human beings and our professions can get overly focused on disease,鈥 Hart said. 鈥淚nstead of focusing on the person, all we see is a diagnosis and want to treat it and move on.鈥
Hart鈥檚 curiosity and dedication have paid off. She was named a Gold Humanism Scholar at the Harvard Macy Institute, a distinguished honor where she will receive leadership training to transform her ideals into reality.
Her curiosity began during her undergraduate studies at Rockhurst University in Kansas City. She observed an elderly woman living alone in a community that didn鈥檛 have public transportation and without access to preventative care, receive acute care again and again. 鈥淚 felt a sense of real frustration and curiosity- why is it this way? The problem I saw and continue to see is a lack of integration. We spend a lot of time and money treating human disease and don鈥檛 spend much on human health.鈥
That was a pivotal moment. The daughter of a nurse, Hart went on to earn her master鈥檚 degree and PhD in public health at the University of Maryland, and worked for the U. S. Surgeon General. Hart and her husband, Edward Hart, M.D., a pathologist at the University, are from the Midwest and have two young children.
Hart seeks a systems-level intervention for better health, and collaboration for positive change in policy and legislation. 鈥淚f the structure of healthcare delivery had a broader lens鈥 keeping people healthy, managing chronic disease, we could flip our work so the majority of work is keeping people healthy instead of just intervening in crisis.鈥
Hart hopes to inspire an inter-professional approach where students ask, 鈥榃ho is the patient? What does her world look like?鈥
鈥淲e bring patients into the hospital, we take off their clothes, we segregate them from their families,鈥 Hart said. 鈥淲e take away their identities. We need to ask, 鈥榃hat drove the patient鈥檚 experience? Was she unable to access early intervention? Does she have the literacy skills to get the care she needs?鈥欌
For Hart, it鈥檚 a whole-person approach to patient care that extends to the community. She鈥檚 happiest guiding students to seek positive changes in healthcare, one patient at a time.
鈥淲hen they can see the human being underneath the patient, everyone is better off.鈥