SONAM alumna Dr Salimah Meghani received the University of Penns​ylvania’s 2021 Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching​ in May 2021. Established in 1961, the prestigious Lindback Award recognises outstanding teachers, and has been presented to only a select few faculty members in the university’s long history. 

She currently serves at the University of Pennsylvania as a professor of nursing where her areas of expertise and passion lie in palliative care. She has taught and mentored many undergraduate, graduate and doctoral level students and is popularly known to be an inspiring teacher, encouraging research scholarship and out-of-the-box thinking for patient and family healthcare outcomes.

With research grants to her credit totalling over US$ 18.8 million, over 100 publications and prestigious international awards, Dr Meghani is recognised as an exemplary nurse scientist disseminating research to initiate change at public policy level. 

Dr Meghani did her Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 1997 from the Aga Khan University School of Nursing and Midwifery, and then went on to receive her MScN (2000), PhD/MBE (2005) and a post-doctorate (2007) from the University of Pennsylvania, USA. 

We asked her about her journey from a student and registered nurse in Karachi to an internationally acclaimed nursing professional. Dr Meghani also spoke about the role the School played in this journey, and what inspires her to give back to her alma mater to help fund students’ financial assistance programmes at AKU.   

There are two potential areas that nursing in Pakistan must grow in. First is to develop and strengthen the role of advance practice nursing in the country, especially in primary, family and community health. Pakistan is one of the few countries where there are more physicians per 10,000 people than there are nurses. This needs to change in order to address the large population health needs of the country. There is ample research done in the West and the National Academy of Medicine and other key reports suggest that advance practice nurses provide similar quality of primary care as physician colleagues. My aspiration is to see a strong role for advance practice nurses in the coming decades. 

My second aspiration is to see nursing research further developed and strengthened in the country as it is bound to positively impact healthcare delivery with evidence-based solutions for local healthcare issues. 

A lot of people say nursing is a noble profession. There are many noble professions.  I do not look at nursing in that narrow way. My advice to young students joining nursing, or those who are on the fence, is to think of nursing as any other competitive profession that provides opportunities for higher education, professional advancement as clinical leaders, academics, and opportunities to pursue and lead many areas of research and practice. The sky is the limit!  

Firstly, AKU gave me, and many others, an educational opportunity that few had available at the time, most certainly women. Secondly, AKU provided the highest quality of nursing education and training, which undoubtedly served as a staunch foundation for any subsequent successes I have had. 

I do have to say that a lot of AKU’s impact on my career only became obvious in retrospect when I came to an Ivy League university in the United States to purse a master’s in nursing. I realised that I had already learned many advanced-level content and concepts during my undergraduate nursing education at AKU. This bolstered my sense of assurance in those early days of uncertainty when I had the tendency to question my audacity to come to University of Pennsylvania - a top-ranking university in the world. 

Looking back, I would say that there is a lot of dormant talent and potential in individuals from diverse and modest backgrounds, but they need a medium to cultivate these talents and this is precisely what I believe AKU did for me.  

My most cherished memories at AKU most definitely include my time living in the girls’ hostel, moments shared with friends on campus and waiting for the favorite food to show up on the cafeteria’s weekly menu!

Financial giving is a vote of confidence and trust. What inspires me to give to AKU is the trust that any gift to AKU would be the best use of the funds and financial resources. I recently attended a useful webinar on gift planning by the AKU Alumni Affairs’ office and decided to list AKU as part of my estate planning. AKU has about 40 years of history of doing impactful work and of charting a thoughtful and farsighted trajectory of sustained leadership in education and quality of healthcare.