Dean's Monthly Communication: November 2006

Message from Dean Woods
This time of year invites me to reflect on all the good things in my life. I try always to make time for this since so much of the time we must focus on the hard things: health disparities in our community and nation, the global health crises, and people who lack basics such as food, shelter and access to health care—just to name a few.

One of the good things I'm focusing on these days is the School of Nursing's reputation for generosity. Last year, we were the school with the highest per-capita contributions to student scholarships and fellowships. We have consistently increased our commitment to the Combined Fund Drive each year. As a community, I notice that we are trying to become more generous with one another.

As you contemplate Thanksgiving and all the good things in your own life, I hope your generosity of spirit will include participating in the Combined Fund Drive, which ends Monday, Dec. 4. Thank you for all you give to the School of Nursing community and to the communities in which we live.  —Nancy Fugate Woods, PhD, RN, FAAN


Campaign UW: Creating Futures Update
Generous Donation to Skills Lab
The estate of Kenneth W. Braget recently donated $300,000 to support an endowment for the Center for Excellence in Nursing Education (CENE). This gift will help us upgrade our Essential Skills Simulation Lab so that our students can attain the essential skills and knowledge they'll need to successfully deal with high-risk patients and emergency situations before they ever lay hands on a real patient. The potential return on the Braget Estate's investment in the CENE is substantial—both for our next generation of nurses and the patients they'll serve.


Honors and Awards
Linda Teri, prof., Dept. of PCH, will receive the M. Powell Lawton Award, which recognizes her significant contributions to the field of gerontology, at the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America on Nov. 19 in Dallas. Last year's award winner, Mary Tinnetti, director of the Yale Program on Aging, will be this year's featured speaker—a mantel Linda Teri will assume at the 2007 GSA meeting.

At the National State of the Science Congress in Nursing Research on Oct. 15, Vicky Hertig, lecturer, Dept. of BNHS, received a meritorious poster award for her research project "Relationship Between Stress and Symptoms in Women with Irritable Bowel Syndrome." Co-authors on the project were Kevin Cain, biostatistician and research scientist, Dept. of Biostatistics; Monica Jarrett, assoc. prof., Dept of BNHS; and Margaret Heitkemper, prof., Dept. of BNHS, and the Elizabeth Sterling Soule Endowed Chair in Nursing.


New Grant Awards
Please join me in congratulating the following faculty for receiving new grant awards between July 2006 and October 2006. The following list includes only new awards recognized by the Office of Sponsored Programs during this time period. Please visit the Web addresses listed to view project abstracts and names of other participants in the projects.

Susan Spieker, prof., Dept of FCN
Project: Promoting Infant Mental Health in Foster Care
Sponsor: National Institute of Mental Health

Rebecca Logsdon, Research Assoc. Prof., Dept. of PCH
Project: Efficacy of Early Stage Alzheimer's Support Groups
Sponsor: National Institutes of Health

Donna Berry, prof. and vice chair for research, Dept. of BNHS, and the Myrene C. McAninch Term Professor in Nursing
Project: Personal Patient Profile-Prostate (P4) Randomized Multi-Site Trial
Sponsor: National Institute of Nursing Research

Elizabeth Bridges, asst. prof., Dept. of BNHS
Project: Combat Casualty Care: Integrative Review and Validation of Nursing Competencies
Sponsor: Department of Defense

Fran Lewis, prof., Dept. of FCN, and the Virginia and Prentice Bloedel Endowed Professor
Project: The Impact of Breast Cancer on Adolescents
Sponsor: Department of Defense

Kristen Archbold, research assoc. prof., Dept. of BNHS
Project: Cognitive and Behavioral Patterns in Children with OSA After Three Months' Continuous Adherence to PAP Therapy
Sponsor: ResMed Foundation


Staff
Linda Johnson Trippett has joined the CNE staff as project manager for the HRSA-funded project "Nursing Leadership in Skilled Nursing Facilities." Linda, an ANCC-recognized nurse planner, will manage development of CNE's self-study curriculum. She has extensive clinical and leadership experience in home health care, acute care, long-term care and continuing nursing education. Also, she was a research nurse on an NINR-funded project studying medication management in assisted living facilities. Most recently, she worked for ERA Care Communities as director of community health. If you want to extend a personal welcome to Linda, you can reach her at trippett@u.washington.edu or 206-221-4963.

Nina Ellen Keaney, a student in the UW master of education in intercollegiate athletic leadership program, is currently working with the School of Nursing Development Office as part of her fall quarter internship with the UW Office of Development and Alumni Relations. During her time with the School of Nursing, she will be identifying funding sources and drafting grant proposals for the Citizens of the World Scholar Award.

BNHS Welcomes Three New Staff Members
Crystal Welliver joined BNHS in August as a program coordinator working with Mark Squire on research grants. Prior to joining BNHS, Crystal worked as the purchasing coordinator for five labs in the Department of Pathology at Harborview.

Mike Horner is a new program coordinator in the Dept. of BNHS. He is working with Pam Mitchell, Elizabeth S. Soule professor and associate dean for research, Dept. of BNHS, on the T32s and with Nia Johnson-Crowley, lecturer, Dept. of BNHS, and director, Nurse Educator Specialist Training (NEST) certificate program, on the NEST grant. Previously, Mike worked with medical residents at the UW School of Medicine.

Julie Hart is a program assistant supporting BNHS curriculum efforts. Julie worked for the Center for Women's Health and Gender Research as an undergraduate.

Faculty
Randy Beaton, research prof., Dept. of PCH, has been awarded a contract to provide child and family disaster research training for a multidisciplinary team of professionals. His goal is to increase their capacity to conduct child-focused disaster research. The project draws upon the extensive experience of national leaders in child trauma and is led by Betty Pfefferbaum, a research psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Oklahoma. She and Beaton will recruit public health care providers and other health care agencies and leaders throughout the Northwest to join a local multidisciplinary research team (LMRT). Team members will be on call to respond to major disasters and will learn the skills necessary to design and conduct studies in the aftermath of a disaster. All research training will be provided at no cost to participating agencies and their LMRT members.

Clark Johnson, research assoc. prof., Dept. of PCH, is participating in a workgroup looking at mirror neurons, which are neurons that fire not only when we perform specific actions but also when we observe others performing those actions. The discovery of this mechanism suggests that when we watch someone doing something we respond as though we were doing it ourselves. A recent article in Scientific American MIND characterized this finding as "one of the prime discoveries in recent neuroscience." In that article, Vilayanur Ramachandran, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and professor of psychology and neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego, says, "Mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: They will . help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments."

Carol Landis, prof., Dept. of BNHS, began a four-year term as a member of the Nursing Science: Adult and Older Adult study section at CSR/NIH in October 2006.


SON in the News
The following SON faculty and alumni have recently been featured in major media outlets:

• Seattle Times (Nov. 2, 2006): Patricia Butterfield, prof. and chair of the Dept. of PCH, co-authored a guest opinion column with Elizabeth Gilbert '83, '05, MN, PhD, asst. prof. at Seattle University, about the occupational safety hazards faced by taxi drivers. Headlined "Mean streets for cabbies," it points out that "A taxi driver's risk of dying on the job is six times greater than the average U.S. worker. In fact, it's even higher than that of police officers or security guards." The article draws on research conducted by Gilbert while she was a doctoral student at the School. Read the article.


• NurseWeek (Oct. 23, 2006): Kathryn Barnard, prof. emerita and founding director of the Center on Infant Mental Health and Development, is acknowledged for being named a Living Legend by the American Academy of Nursing. That same issue of NurseWeek featured two SON alumnae: Janet Lewis '78 appeared on the front cover and Susan Atkins '86 was quoted in an article about joint replacement surgery. Lewis is a charge nurse at the Joint Center in Valley Medical Center in Renton, and Atkins is an ER nurse at the same facility.
• Read the Barnard article.
• Read the joint replacement article.


• Nursing Outlook (May–June 2006): Articles about the practice doctorate in nursing written by Diane Magyary, professor, Dept. of PCH; Mary Ann Draye, asst. professor, Dept. of PCH; and Marie-Annette Brown, professor, Dept. of FCN, made the list of Top 25 Hottest Articles downloaded during the months of April–June 2006.

• Faculty co-leaders Josephine Ensign and Michael Kennedy report that all 12 BSN students arrived in Thailand as scheduled and that things are going very well. Recent political events in Thailand have had little or no impact on the program.


• As part of a faculty exchange program with SON, Noel Chrisman lectured at Ishikawa Prefectural Nursing University (IPNU) for two weeks in September. IPNU Professor Atsuko Emoto had visited the SON last spring. Chrisman gave seven two-hour lectures on qualitative research over the two-week period. Topics included teaching community health and cross-cultural nursing. He will post photographs from his trip on the Web. If you are interested in viewing them, contact him at noelj@u.washington.edu.


• Janet Lenart, lecturer in the Dept. of BNHS, led an Exploration Seminar in Vicenza, Italy, in September 2006. Twenty UW students, including nursing students, attended her course, Health in the Context of Italian Culture, and received 5 credit hours. Classes alternated between classroom lectures in an Italian health faculty and tours of nearby historical sites and cheese, salami and olive-oil factories. Students enjoyed several Italian dinners during their time in Vicenza. Exploration Seminars are self-supporting courses offered between the summer and autumn quarters. Faculty interested in leading a seminar like Janet's should contact jlenart@u.washington.edu or visit the Exploration Seminar Web site.

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