September 2015 Highlights: From an Honor in Thailand to Executive Leadership in the U.S., UMSN Faculty Lead by Example

Dean Kathleen Potempa, PhD, RN, FAAN, received an honorary PhD from Mahidol University in Thailand. Dean Potempa was selected for her significant contributions in the field of nursing. Her extensive body of research includes a currently funded National Institutes of Nursing Research/Fogarty program to address non-communicable diseases in Thailand.

 

 

“It was just so mind-blowing that you go out in a helicopter and provide the same care you provide at the bedside at 2,000 feet, flying 160 miles an hour,” says U-M Health System (UMHS) Survival Flight nurse Elaine Philipson. “From then I was hooked and knew that this was what I wanted to do and where my career was going to go.” Philipson, a UMSN graduate, (BSN ‘07, MS ‘09) is profiled in a UMHS video and shares how she didn’t even know about flight nursing while growing up in England but quickly found her path when she began working at U-M. 

 

Lisa Kane Low, PhD, CNM, FACNM, FAAN, is now UMSN Associate Dean for Practice and Professional Graduate Studies. Dr. Kane Low, an associate professor at UMSN and in Women’s Studies, is a nationally known practicing midwife and scientist. Her research focuses on evidence based labor care practices during childbirth. She is currently President-Elect of the American College of Nurse Midwives and will assume the presidency in May 2016. Dr. Kane Low is also well known as a mentor to both undergraduate and graduate students.

 

Janet Larson, PhD, RN, FAAN, has been appointed UMSN’s Shaké Ketefian Collegiate Professor of Nursing. “A Collegiate Professorship recognizes the holder for considerable and sustained contributions to the field including research/scholarship, teaching and leadership,” says UMSN Dean Kathleen Potempa, PhD, RN, FAAN. Dr. Larson, UMSN’s department chair for Health Behavior and Biological Sciences, has a program of research spanning 25 years focused on improving the health of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Dr. Larson chose the name of her Collegiate Professor to honor Dr. Ketefian, a UMSN professor emerita, internationally recognized for her leadership in promoting graduate education for nurses.

 

UMSN’s Jody Lori, PhD, CNM, CNM, FACNM, FAAN,  completed the American Association of Colleges of Nursing – Wharton Executive Leadership Program. The competitive program accepts only 40 participants per year. It is designed to enhance leadership capacity through building skills to drive change such as inspiring and influencing stakeholders and building enterprising relationships. Dr. Lori currently serves as UMSN’s Associate Dean for Global Affairs and Director of UMSN’s World Health Organization/Pan-American Health Organization Collaborating Center.

 

New research from UMSN and U-M’s School of Public Health is confirming the importance of educational goals and their impact on violent behavior, but with some gender differences. Assistant Professor Sarah Stoddard, PhD, CPNP, and colleagues focused on nearly 700 students from the time before they started 9^th grade to age 22. The researchers found young African-American men with well-established educational aspirations were less likely to engage in violent behavior.  Overall, the girls in the study were less likely than the boys to accept and engage in violence, and also had higher educational aspirations. "For boys, future educational aspirations were in some ways more important than for girls in predicting later attitudes and violent behavior," Dr. Stoddard said. "Boys tend not to be as connected to schools as girls are. They are less engaged in education, more exposed to violence and more involved with violence. It is important to look at ways to engage young people in looking at their future in different ways."

 

New findings from UMSN Assistant Professor Deena Kelly Costa, PhD, RN, suggest that isolated efforts to expand high intensity daytime physician staffing are likely unwarranted. Dr. Costa and colleagues found in a large sample of intensive care units (ICUs) that high-intensity daytime physician staffing was not significantly associated with lower risk-adjusted ICU mortality. Interprofessional rounds and protocols for mechanical ventilation were also not associated with mortality and did not impact the relationship between physician staffing and mortality. Dr. Costa believes these findings suggest that efforts such as improving ICU work environments and increasing the number of baccalaureate-prepared nurses may hold more promise for reducing ICU mortality. In addition, the researchers found almost all ICUs had interprofessional rounds and protocols, which demonstrates success in introducing these practices to ICUs. This paper’s abstract was awarded ‘Best of Annual Research Meeting' at AcademyHealth.

 

Stephen Strobbe, PHD, RN, PMHCNS-BC, CARN-AP, clinical associate professor at the U-M School of Nursing, and the Department of Psychiatry, is editor and author of Chapter 2, "Theoretical Perspectives," in the newly released Core Curriculum of Addictions Nursing, Third Edition, published by the International Nurses Society on Addictions (IntNSA). Dr. Strobbe serves as president-elect of IntNSA, and will assume the presidency of this organization in 2016.

 

“There is growing need for a framework to evaluate the contribution of precision medicine to cancer treatment quality,” writes Assistant Professor Christopher Friese, PhD, RN, AOCN, FAAN, in a newly published commentary in JAMA Oncology. Dr. Friese and Dr. Allison Kurian, of Standford University, review role of the 21-gene recurrence score (RS) assay in “the concept of targeting therapy to a patient’s unique genetic or other relevant characteristic” known as precision medicine. The authors call for a deeper understanding of patients’ and physicians’ perspectives to better understand how decisions about RS assay guidance and usage are made.

 

“A lot of academics are interested in populations at work, but there’s not a lot of collaboration between university-based researchers and Occupational Health Nurses (OHNs) in the field,” says UMSN Professor Emerita Sally L. Lusk, PhD, RN, FAAN, FAAOHN, in a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) report focused on worker health. “OHNs can make sure research questions are clinically relevant and provide access to worker populations for study.” Dr. Lusk’s quote appears in Beyond ROI: Measuring the Impact of Workplace Health Initiatives on page 8 of the brief.