Nursing Research – “Nurses Transforming Healthcare: From Genes to Global Health”

(Part 1)	(Part 2)
(Part 3)	(Part 4)
(Part 5)	(Part 6)

The vision for the BWH Department of Nursing is to provide excellent care to patients and families, with the best staff, in the safest environment. This vision is only possible when the foundation for nursing practice is nursing research. Nursing research develops knowledge to improve nursing practice. This symposia includes updates on some of nursing research at the BWH that is informing our practice ranging from studies exploring bio markers for the identification and improved treatment of chronic disease, to describing the RNs contribution to promoting patient safety, and research on global health. Moreover, the patient perspective on BWH nursing practice and the degree to which our practice is aligned with our vision will be addressed.

Talk 1

Speaker: Priscilla Gazarian, RN, PhD, Nursing Program Director, Center for Nursing Excellence, BWH.

Topic: Dr. Gazarian will discuss how cognitive task analysis exposes the unique, situated decision making of practicing nurses and how it can be used to makes nursing expertise explicit. When this nursing expertise is made explicit, it can be more easily shared, so nurses are able to practice safely in novel situations.

Talk 2

Speaker: Patrice Nicholas, DNSc, DHL (Hon.), MPH, RN, ANP-C, FAAN, Director of Global Health & Academic Partnerships, Center for Nursing Excellence, BWH.

Topic: Dr. Nicholas will discuss results from her international research related to symptom management of HIV/AIDS and collaborative work with the International HIV/AIDS Nursing Research Network.

Talk 3

Speaker: Patricia Underwood, PhD, FNP, RN, Nurse Scientist, Center for Nursing Excellence, BWH.

Topic: Dr. Underwood will discuss results from her current program of research that identifies genetic and physiologic markers associated with insulin resistance, hypertension, and the metabolic syndrome.

Session Chair: Patricia Dykes, DNSc, MA, RN, FAAN, FACMI, Research Program Director, Center for Nursing Excellence, BWH.

Research bios

Dr. Patricia Dykes is Research Program Director and Senior Nurse Scientist in the Center for Nursing Excellence and the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) where she is building a program of informatics and patient safety research.  Dykes and her team developed an electronic fall prevention toolkit to improve care team communication (including with patients and family caregivers) related to fall risk status and tailored prevention plans. The toolkit was found to significantly reduce falls in acute care hospitals. Dr. Dykes and her team have expanded this research and are exploring the use of technology to provide the core set of information needed by care team members (including patients) at the bedside to provide and engage in safe patient care.

Dr. Priscilla Gazarian‘s research interests include nurse decision making related to the prevention of adverse events and innovative teaching strategies. Dr. Gazarian is developing a program of research on nurse decision making. She has an appointment as a Nurse Scientist at the Center for Nursing Excellence at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She has received funding from the Association of Critical Care Nurses/Medtronic to investigate nurse decision making in preventing in-hospital cardio-pulmonary arrests.

Dr. Patrice Nicholas is Director of Global Health and Academic Partnerships in the Center for Nursing Excellence and the Division of Global Health Equity and Professor at the MGH Institute of Health Professions. Dr. Nicholas is also a member of the Board of Directors of the International Honor Society in Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. Dr. Nicholas’ program of research focuses on her areas of expertise in global health and symptom management in HIV/AIDS. Her research includes the study of peripheral neuropathy in HIV disease and the clinical management of pain in HIV. Dr. Nicholas was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in South Africa at the University of KwaZulu-Natal where she lectured in the master’s and doctoral programs in the College of Nursing and conducted research on HIV symptoms. With her team, she has conducted numerous studies on HIV/AIDS self-care, quality of life, and adherence to therapy. In South Africa, she completed two studies on adherence to antiretroviral therapy and adherence to tuberculosis medications. Dr. Nicholas is a member of the International HIV/AIDS Nursing Research Network which is currently engaged in their fifth collaborative research study

Dr. Patricia Underwood is a Nurse Scientist in the Center for Nursing Excellence and a National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsored Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Hypertension at BWH. Her work, fostered within an inter-disciplinary research team, focuses on identifying genetic markers for complex metabolic disease and investigating the physiology underlying the identified associations. Future work will extend these findings to examine whether genomic-based nurse-led prevention and treatment strategies that identify individuals most at risk and target the physiologic pathway altered are more effective than current models of care.