Sean Clarke
PhD, RN, FAAN

Sean Clarke, PhD, RN, FAAN, is a health policy and outcomes researcher who currently holds the Ursula Springer Professorship in Nursing Leadership at New York University’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing (NYU Meyers). His research and writing focus on quality and safety issues in acute care hospitals, workforce issues, occupational safety of nurses, and the influences of economic and political factors on healthcare delivery and the nursing profession. He is perhaps best known for his studies on nurse staffing in hospitals and surveys of nurses’ working conditions. For 30 years, Dr. Clarke has taught nursing, health sciences, health policy, and research at all levels in major universities in the United States, Canada, and beyond. He also held endowed chairs and senior leadership roles in leading nursing schools, most recently as Executive Vice Dean at NYU Meyers from 2019 to 2024, and maintained a program of research with colleagues from several countries. 

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Dr. Clarke has been a principal investigator on projects supported by the National Institute of Nursing Research, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care and has served as principal investigator or co-investigator on grants totaling over $10 million over the course of his career. He is currently co-principal investigator of “Towards Magnet 3.0,” a multimethod evaluation of the current Magnet® recognition program model, supported by the American Nurses Credentialing Center, and principal investigator of the evaluation of the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation’s Nursing Initiative, which is providing $50 million in special funding and resources to hospitals in New York State to address nurse workforce challenges from 2025-2030. He has served as a consultant to clinicians, leaders, professional associations, policymakers and regulators on issues related to nursing and patient safety and has been extensively involved in journal editing and peer review of research projects for two decades in Canada, the United States, and internationally. Dr. Clarke has authored or co-authored over 170 articles and 35 book chapters.

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He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Nursing Outlook, the official journal of the American Academy of Nursing and the leading international venue for current research and thought on leadership, policy and professional issues in nursing. Since 2023, Dr. Clarke has chaired the grant review committee for the national competition for clinically oriented nursing and allied health science research for the Ministry of Health in France. 

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A native of Ottawa, Canada, where he received his undergraduate education, he went on to pursue graduate-level clinical and research training in nursing at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and completed nurse practitioner education and a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing since 2006.