USD Magazine Summer 2019

TORERO  NEWS

Sharp HealthCare’s Dan Gross ’97 (DNsc), at far left, Pablo Velez ’06 (PhD), center, and Susan Stone ’93 (MSN), ’08 (PhD), right, hold some of the most influential health care leadership positions in the region.

T h r e e s t a r s f r o m U S D ’ s S c h o o l o f N u r s i n g s h i n e [ t r i u m v e r a t e ] HEALTH CARE HOTSHOTS

by Karen Gross

T

he Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science consis- tently ranks among the top

toral nursing education at USD. Dan Gross ‘97 (DNsc) is Sharp’s executive vice president for hos- pital operations. “I’d had a very strong and successful career here at Sharp,” he says, reflecting on a career that started in the surgical ICU in 1979 and took him up the leadership ladder over the ensu- ing years. “I was thinking about academ- ics, research, advanced leader- ship roles at Sharp. I wanted to make sure that no door was closed.” Encouraged by col- leagues who’d already earned their doctorates and enticed by the Hubbard scholarship, which made the program economically feasible, he enrolled in 1995. “The other thing that attracted me was the curriculum design.

programs in the nation, in large part due to its stellar graduate nursing training and innovative research. Nowhere is the school’s imprint more impressive than in San Diego, where alumni hold some of the most influential lead- ership positions in the region. Three now hold some of the high- est offices at Sharp HealthCare; each benefited from a full scholar- ship endowed by Marion Hubbard specifically for doc-

Knowledgeable

Beyond the core require- ments there was a lot of flexibility,” he says. “I took quite a bit of coursework in USD’S schools of

PHOTOS BY CHRIS PARK

education and business. Being

Remarkable

“One of the truly most valuable things about a doctoral education is you learn to think more critical- ly. You learn to really look at the literature and see what others have done before making a big decision,” he says. “Hospitals today are all about the team, clinical outcomes and clinical care deliv- ery. Who more than a nurse has that global, comprehensive view?” Pablo Velez ‘06 (PhD) already

had a master’s degree and years of work experience when he decided it was time to fulfill his ultimate dream. “I wanted more knowledge, but I also did it for personal reasons,” says Velez, who was born in Puerto Rico and attended high school and college there. “I was just the second person in my family to go to college. It’s a lot of work, going back to school. But once you’re

focused on leader- ship at the time, this was the perfect doc- toral program for me.” Gross completed his doctorate in three years. Today, he is

effectively the Chief Operating Officer of the entire Sharp Health- Care system.

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