A road less traveled in nursing

Barbara St. Pierre Schneider forges a research path in physiological nursing

Barbara St. Pierre Schneider and student observing an experiment.

UW-Madison School of Nursing has a tradition of having a cadre of nurse scientists who are psychosocial researchers or physiological researchers. Walking through the K6/3 module, one clearly can see that Assistant Professor Barbara St. Pierre Schneider is a physiological nurse scientist. Her research space is a laboratory filled with state-of-the art physiological equipment and decorated with images photographed from microscope slides of skeletal muscle. A flurry of activity by student research assistants is commonly observed in the laboratory.

The study currently being carried out by St. Pierre Schneider and her assistants focuses on the effects of ovarian hormones, estrogen and progesterone, on the movement of white blood cells into skeletal muscle injured by exercise. This research is funded through an R01 grant awarded to St. Pierre Schneider from the National Institute of Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health. Findings from the study might help to determine whether men and women who sustain a muscle injury should receive different post-injury treatments and whether a woman’s ovarian hormone status should be considered when a woman is being treated for a muscle injury.

How did St. Pierre Schneider forge a research path in physiological nursing? It started when she was a nursing student at Louisiana State University Medical Center. St. Pierre Schneider recalls caring for an elderly female patient who was being treated with chemotherapy for advanced cervical cancer. She was struck by how the cancer treatment, chemotherapy, could have a potentially life-threatening effect on the patient’s blood cells.

St. Pierre Schneider’s interest in physiological nursing grew, she says, when she was a staff nurse and realized that “there were physiological questions that nurses needed to answer to provide better care” to patients.

As a graduate nursing student at the University of California Los Angeles, St. Pierre Schneider became involved in research at the cellular level—a road less traveled in nursing. At this point, St. Pierre Schneider began her career of studying white blood cells and the substances produced by these cells, called cytokines. She strengthened her research skills through postdoctoral training at the University of California Los Angeles and Pennsylvania State University.

St. Pierre Schneider arrived at UW-Madison School of Nursing to build a nursing research program aimed at learning more about white blood cells and their involvement in muscle healing. St. Pierre Schneider’s decision to take a road less traveled in nursing could potentially make a difference for the millions of men and women who engage in physical activity.

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Updated November 9, 2004 10:46 AM . For feedback, questions, or accessibility issues contact kcfreimu@wisc.edu
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