NEWS ARCHIVES

NURSING DIMENSIONS

NURSES' ALUMNI ORGANIZATION NEWSLETTER

MNRS Honors Brennan with Distinguished Researcher Award Patricia Flatley Brennan, PhD, RN, FAAN, the Lillian Moehlman-Bascom Professor of Nursing at the UW-Madison School of Nursing, was selected to receive the 2007 Distinguished Contribution to Research in the Midwest Award presented at the Midwest Nursing Research Society's (MNRS) 31st annual conference held March 23-26, 2007, in Omaha, Nebraska. The award recognized the faculty researcher's outstanding and sustained contributions to nursing research, particularly those that have enhanced the science and practice of nursing in the Midwest. Brennan joined the UW-Madison School of Nursing faculty in 1996. She concurrently holds a faculty appointment in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in the College of Engineering on the UW-Madison campus. Her research in the area of nursing informatics--the integration of nursing science with information technology to manage an individual's health care--has garnered national acclaim. Brennan became a member of the prestigious Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2001. Among her other more-recent honors have been the Pacquin Lecturer from the Department of Nursing at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clincs (2001), the Distinguished Nurse Researcher from the National Institute of Nursing Research/ National Institutes of Health (2002), the CIC Academic Leadership Fellow (2004-05), the Lazerow Lecturer from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis (2005), and the Distinguished Lecturer from the University of Missouri in St. Louis. She has authored nearly 200 articles, book chapters, and other scholarly work and has presented her research and other research-related topics at symposia, conferences, and society meetings more than 300 times in her career. The UW nurse-researcher is current director of a $4.4 million project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Titled "Project HealthDesign: Rethinking the Power and Potential of Personal Health Record," its aim is to design a health information system that provides patients and consumers of health care with the tools to engage in their own health care in order to live healthier lives. Brennan also presented the keynote address at the conference. The topic centered on what nursing contributes to, and gains from, health information exchange. "MNRS has a long and distinguished history of recognizing and nurturing talented nurse researchers," Brennan notes. "The friends and colleagues I have made through the society have supported, challenged, and engaged me in such a sustaining way. My contributions are reflective of their encouragement and inspiration."