From Candy Striper to Industry Icon: The Inspiring Nursing Journey of Diane Thompkins (MS, BS ‘76)

As a grade-schooler in 1960s Prince George’s County, Maryland, Diane Thompkins, MS, BS ’76, RN, aspired to a career in computers. Then, teaching history like her next-door neighbor felt like a calling. The dark computer labs of that era fizzled that aspiration as quickly as the landscape of high school classrooms soured her on stepping into one as a teacher. A love for science and teaching, though, would stay with her, woven together with patient care she observed as a teen candy striper at the local hospital where her mother was a medical secretary.

Thompkins watched with fascination how the nurses were calm in all situations, meeting people where they were and providing what they needed. That’s what she realized she wanted to do.

Decades later after her retirement in 2023, Thompkins was honored by the American Board of Nursing Specialties when they renamed their lifetime achievement award The Diane Thompkins Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her significant impact on the nursing industry. It’s an impact shaped by continually following her interests and pushing herself forward into new, patient-centered experiences.

“It was uncommon back then for a nurse to have a four-year college degree, but higher education was important to my parents and having a bachelor’s degree was important to me, so when I worked alongside the registered nurses as a candy striper and knew that’s what I wanted to do, I started looking around for college programs,” Thompkins said.

While the University of Maryland was less than 30 miles from her home, Thompkins wanted to explore. The University at Buffalo School of Nursing offered a four-year nursing degree, was out of state and affordable. Attending UB also meant the opportunity to leave behind segregated education.

While downtown Buffalo was struggling economically, the city’s ethnic neighborhoods and students from all over New York were a welcome cultural education for Thompkins. She was also impressed by UB’s commitment to keeping the main campus in the city while other businesses and organizations moved to the suburbs.

“I was focused during my time in Buffalo: go to class, go to clinical and experience the world so I could appreciate it. I felt it was my job to get it done in eight semesters, but I also had fun learning about where people were from, hearing how they spoke and trying new foods. But I never did like chicken wings dipped in bleu cheese,” Thompkins said. 

Thompkins’ first professional experience in bedside nursing took her to University of Chicago Hospital in Hyde Park as a graduate nurse awaiting the results of her board exams. She was there for two years in the medical and surgical units as a new registered nurse — time she spent thinking about another goal: enlisting in the military and training as a flight nurse.

“The three choices I had after high school were to go to work, go to college or enlist in the military. My father grew up in Florida and was in the Navy during World War II, and I was thinking about college for nursing when the Vietnam War was winding down. By the time I got out of school, the military programs funding nurses were also winding down, so nurses admitted to the military needed to come with experience,” Thompkins said.

Once she got that in Chicago, it was off to Texas for Air Force officer training, then being stationed at March Air Force Base in Riverside, California. Even as she moved up rank from 2nd to 1st lieutenant, her nursing shift assignments were not the experiences she hoped for. Thompkins began to reconsider her Air Force career plans. Meeting with her colonel and new base nursing director opened another door.

“I initially told her I was planning to leave after my three years and that I wanted to transfer to another unit until then. But then I decided to take the risk and tell her what I really wanted: to go to flight nursing school. She came back and told me to pack my bags, that I was going to Brooks Air Force Base (in San Antonio) for flight nursing training. I learned then and there to always be truthful with people because if you say nothing you’ll just stay where you are,” Thompkins said.

“I initially told her I was planning to leave after my three years and that I wanted to transfer to another unit until then. But then I decided to take the risk and tell her what I really wanted: to go to flight nursing school. She came back and told me to pack my bags, that I was going to Brooks Air Force Base (in San Antonio) for flight nursing training. I learned then and there to always be truthful with people because if you say nothing you’ll just stay where you are,” Thompkins said.

Flight nursing school was rigorous. Thompkins learned to swim so that she could pass the survival training simulations required to serve as a nurse caring for patients being transported on flights all over the world. Every step of the way were teachers guiding her through acknowledging fears and managing competencies. She got her certificate for completing flight nursing school, proudly pinned her wings over her rank, and then realized she was ready to go back to school.

Thompkins left the Air Force as a captain in 1981, not long after her three-year commitment [for nurses] was up. She headed to the University of Maryland for her Master of Science in Nursing Education, while simultaneously working as an evening charge nurse at Prince George’s Hospital and Medical Center’s medical cardiology and renal unit. Her academic experience reignited her aspirations to teach, but the reality of academia – the significant amount of time spent in committees and meetings and working on administrative tasks versus actual classroom time with students – paused her track on that again.

In 1984, accepting a position as a clinical nurse at the National Institute of Health set her on a 14-year path where Thompkins found ways to be the educator she was at heart. First as an interim head nurse, then as a nurse educator designing, developing, implementing and evaluating education programs for nurses. Thompkins was also ecstatic when the agency began using electronic medical records and she found herself using computers in nursing. All her pathways and ambitions converged when managing nursing continuing education programs led to credentialing.

Thompkins left the National Institute of Health in 1998 and spent several years as an advice nurse for Kaiser while also working part-time guiding nurses through review courses, and again in nursing education and staff development. Then, in 2004, she accepted the position of Assistant Director of Certification Services for the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), a subsidiary of the American Nurses Association that is an internationally renowned for its credentialing programs that certify and recognize individual nurses in specialty practice areas.   

Over the next 19 years to her retirement, Thompkins would also serve the ANCC as a senior certification program analyst as liaison to faculty, students and schools seeking certification for nurse practitioners and clinical nurse specialists, and providing expertise, guidance and leadership as manager of accreditation. 

“No matter where we are, everything we do in nursing is for the benefit of the patient,” Thompkins said, “Ultimately what we do in credentialing is for nurses who interact with the patients, so if you have a good, qualified workforce — the patient wins.”

As Thompkins’ roles evolved at the American Nurses Association, she kept pace with tying together advanced practice, specialty nursing, nursing education, regulations and state licensing. She routinely represented the APRN at nursing stakeholder meetings and even piloted transforming a massive national level accreditation binder into an electronic file. Her institutional memory and work in credentialing would lay the groundwork for providing support to several other nursing stakeholder groups, including the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties, National Council of State Boards of Nursing and National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists. 

“When I think back to what I learned at UB, I can still hear ‘every patient deserves your best and to be treated ethically’,” Thompkins said, “That was a driver throughout my career. I took an indirect route [to certification and credentialing], but everything I learned along the way applied to that work. It was just as important as my work in bedside nursing.”

Today, Thompkins’ mother insists she display the award she received from the American Board of Nursing Specialties. She acquiesced, even bringing it along to a large family reunion, so she could be an example to her profession, and to her community.

By TERRA OSTERLING