Keondra Rustan
Keondra Rustan is a second-year Doctoral Candidate in the Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Program at the University of Washington. She has a focus on serving underserved populations, those with trauma and substance use disorders. Keondra hopes to improve accessibility of care and education in those communities.
A native of Virginia, she started her education in nursing there and then became a registered nurse with a background in cardiac medicine, critical care, trauma, and emergency medicine. As a practicing registered nurse, she took on various leadership roles: leading educational practices, running mock codes, working with the infection control department on research, precepting students, precepting new nurse graduates, and serving as charge nurse. She then went on to become a nurse manager, a clinical educator, a simulation educator, and then a program director. Throughout this time, she would go on to earn her Master’s in Nursing education and then her Ph.D. in Nursing Education. She earned her certification as a certified nurse educator and certified healthcare simulation educator in 2018, and then she earned her certification in trauma nursing care in 2022.
In January 2020, she came to the University of Washington to serve as Assistant Director of the Simulation Center for the School of Nursing. During this time, she was awarded the Excellence in Clinical Teaching Award in June 2021 and the Dr. C. June Strickland Distinguished Diversity & Transcultural Nursing Advocate Award in 2022. In 2022, Keondra won the Lois Spratlen Price Foundation Scholarship and was the keynote speaker for the 2023 Scholarship celebration. She helped to transition simulation and skills training into an online environment and helped to run COVID-19 vaccination training so that students and staff could vaccinate those who needed it.
Keondra entered the University of Washington Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner DNP Program in the Autumn of 2022 and stepped down from her role as Assistant Director. She served as a Teaching Assistant for the Simulation Center for one year and later served as a clinical teaching assistant. She serves as a resource and a source of support for her peers and continues to mentor undergraduate and potential nursing students.
Beyond campus, Keondra is actively involved in the community serving as President of the Mary Mahoney Professional Nurses Organization, being a member of the National Council of Negro Women, and also being a member and presenter for the Society for Simulation in Healthcare, INACSL, and the NLN.
- Appointed by Governor Jay Inslee from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025
- Confirmed by the Senate on