Nurse practitioner Joslin Leasca combines a healing touch with solid scientific training.
In 1980, Joslin B. Leasca followed her new husband, Thomas ’78 (B.S. finance), out to Los Angeles for his job. Leasca, a registered nurse who graduated from St. Joseph Hospital School of Nursing in 1979, took a job working with critically ill children. The team she was on—a two-nurse squad devoted to working with one child on a heart and lung machine—was headed by a nurse practitioner. “One R.N. was the heart and the other R.N. was the lungs, and the nurse practitioner pulled it all together. I thought, ‘boy oh boy, that’s really neat. That’s what I’d like to do.’ ”
Before she knew it, though, two daughters, Amy and Stacey, had come along. Between raising her girls and periodically moving the family to whatever interesting place Tom’s position with the Gilbane Company took them, the years went by without Leasca returning to school.
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It was the mid 1990s before she found herself in a place in life when she could meet her goal. She earned her B.S. in nursing from the State University of New York, then enrolled in URI’s M.S.N. program, graduating in 1999 as a nurse practitioner. Last year, Leasca was named the 2005 American Academy of Nurse Practitioners’ Rhode Island Nurse Practitioner of the Year.
Nurse practitioners’ advanced training means they have the expertise and the licensing to fulfill many roles that traditionally were reserved for medical doctors, such as diagnosing illness and prescribing medications.
The field has grown tremendously in the years since Leasca’s introduction to her first nurse practitioner. There are some 90,000 nurse practitioners nationwide today, with roughly 750 in Rhode Island. It’s a start, but so many more are needed. Statewide Health Assessment Planning and Evaluation (SHAPE), a foundation founded and financed by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island, published a 2004 report that warned of a coming shortage of doctors, particularly specialists. Those shortages will make the role of nurse practitioner increasingly important, says Leasca.
Take geriatrics, for example. “It can take six to eight months for a patient to see a geriatrician for the first meeting,” she notes. The aging of America’s baby boomers, the oldest of whom are already in their later years of middle age, coupled with the acute nursing shortage, will mean a crisis in elder care in the near future.
URI’s College of Nursing is planning for that future with its recently established geriatric specialty for master’s degree students. “That program is so worth singing the praises of,” Leasca enthuses. “The care of the elderly requires in-depth knowledge of the changes associated with aging, and our elderly want and deserve that unique specialty care.”
Most local nurse practitioners work in doctor’s offices. Leasca had a more independent plan. After graduation, she put together a business proposal and solicited area doctors with the aim of working side by side with—not for—a physician. One of the doctors she met with was an internal medicine and pulmonary specialist in Warwick, R.I. “I went to his practice, and within 30 seconds, I knew I wanted to work with him,” she says. “He was so holistic in his approach. He set a standard for care that was the way I wanted to practice.”
Now, Leasca is taking that standard of care to the next level as a nurse practitioner with the Curative Wound Care Center at South County Hospital in Wakefield. She takes the standards of evidence-based health care and applies them in a center well recognized for excellence. She is also developing a community outreach program to address chronic wounds.
According to Leasca, the holistic approach is a hallmark of nurse practitioners. “Nurse practitioners work with the whole person, the whole family, and with the person’s environment and lifestyle, which really is the foundation of nursing, but as a nurse practitioner, I have authority to make changes.” For a patient with a chronic wound, Leasca works not only with the wound, but with other health care providers and family members to make changes in the patient’s medical care and lifestyle to promote healing and optimal health.
Leasca was the fifth woman in her family to graduate from URI. Since then, her daughter Amy earned a B.S. in marketing in 2004 and daughter Stacey will soon graduate with degrees in education, English, and journalism, making them the sixth and seventh women over four generations to graduate from URI.
According to Leasca, URI’s undergrad nursing program “beats everybody’s,” and URI is the only school in Rhode Island to offer a master’s degree in the field. “It’s a very competitive program,” she says. “You have to have good grades, strong GREs, and a strong work history to get in.”
What makes the nurse practitioner program so good? “Oh, Denise Coppa!” says Leasca. Denise Coppa, M.S.N., R.N.P., Ph.D, is director of the program. “Dr. Coppa and the program’s faculty set standards that are so high, their expectations are so high, and their aspirations for their students are so high— their students do not fail! Faculty members make time to shepherd each student through the intricacies of a difficult and demanding academic program.”
Leasca also praises Dean Dayle Joseph, Ed.D., R.N., for the high quality of the program and its emphasis on choosing high-caliber candidates and working closely with them to ensure success. The result of such rigor is a 100 percent job placement rate. Leasca herself returns to the college each semester as a guest lecturer on professional issues and pulmonary disease.
Leasca and her husband of 25 years live in South Kingstown “where we hear the ocean every morning,” and their daughters share a home nearby. “I’m so blessed,” she says. “I have my dear husband, the two most wonderful daughters in the world, and when I get up every morning, I love to go to work.”
By Paula M. Bodah ’78Photo by Heather Ferraro Photography
