Speakers - WNSC 2023

Biography

Dr Spector authorises several books, including Cultural Diversity in Health and Illness; Cultural Care: Guides to Heritage Assessment and Health Traditions; and Las Culturas de la SALUD, published in Spain (2003). She is continuing her research in cultural diversity, expecting to publish an international edition of Las Culturas de la SALUD.

Dr Spector was an associate professor at the William F. Connell Boston College School of Nursing, where she taught Community Health Nursing, Issues in Nursing and Health Care, and Culture and Health Care. Much of her work focused on developing and teaching models of effective nursing care, or “cultural care," in multicultural populations. For more than 30 years, Dr Spector has researched, taught, practised, and consulted in this specialty in many parts of the United States and internationally. She initiated and mounted the popular “Immigrant Health Traditions” exhibit at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in 1994.

Dr Spector is a Mount Sinai Hospital School of Nursing graduate in New York City. She earned a B.S. in Nursing, an M.S. in Community Health Nursing from Boston College School of Nursing, and a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing. She is a Distinguished Alumna from the Mount Sinai Hospital School of Nursing, a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, and a Scholar in Transcultural Nursing. The Massachusetts Association of Registered Nurses, the State organization of the American Nurses Association, honored Dr. Spector as a “Living Legend” in 2007. In 2008, the American Nurses Association awarded her an Honorary Human Rights Award. In 2010, she was appointed a Visiting Distinguished Scholar, Institute for Patient Care, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.