UW-Madison School of Nursing
Postdoctoral Research Interests

Lori S. Anderson, RN, PhD, CPNP (to view CV)

The focus of my research is the care of children with special health care needs (CSHCN) as they transition between health care, home, and school settings. CSHCN and their families experience challenges coordinating care between these systems.  This affects children’s overall health, which affects school attendance, school performance, self-determination, and ultimately, their ability to reach their life potential.  A nation-wide nursing shortage contributes to the scarcity of school nurses with the expertise to care for these children and attend to their complex needs.  We need training programs for school nurses to manage the transition from school to home to healthcare settings so these children are healthy enough to learn.  We propose the SMOOTHS (Smooth Medicalcare On Transitioning from Home to School) program to address these issues.  SMOOTHS is a web-based program intended to support school nurses and to provide them with the knowledge and skills to coordinate and deliver complex care to CSHCN and their families. The objective of SMOOTHS is to improve the quality of life of young people with special health care needs and their caretakers.  The project has four phases:  Phase 1: Identify and document the challenges of providing care across settings including healthcare settings, home, and school through structured interviews with  school nurses and families and a national survey of school nurses.  Phase 2: Develop a web based training program, SMOOTHS, targeted to school nurses.  Phase 3:  Implement a pilot training program in SMOOTHS for nurses in selected school districts.  Phase 4: Compare selected outcomes among CSHCN, their parents, and school personnel whose care was coordinated by SMOOTHS trained persons with those who received usual care.

Patricia L. Harper, MPH, EdD (to view CV)

My study will address the question of why physicians who are familiar with the appropriate clinical practice guideline nevertheless do not routinely offer effective, evidence based interventions for tobacco addiction to their patients. The study will employ a diagnostic model in continuing medical education (CME) program development described in Olson, Cochrane & Mejicano (2004). The model is designed to examine clinical decision making in an organizational, economic, social and political context and results in a concept map illustrating the multiple factors influencing physicians’ behavior in the area of clinical interventions and the complex interrelationships between those factors. This study will examine physicians’ experiences with obstacles and challenges to integrating evidence based practice in the area of tobacco addiction into their practices, outline the relationships between the obstacles identified, and identify how the results of this study give guidance to interventions aimed at change in clinical practice in the area of tobacco addiction. The study will use a qualitative phenomenological research design with in-depth interviews of past participants in CME training activities designed to teach tobacco intervention guidelines.

Karen Kehl, RN, PhD (to view CV)

My research interest is in using innovative methods from many disciplines, including quality management to improve the quality of care at the end of life. I am especially interested in issues pertaining to the role of family at the end-of-life and family response to death in diverse settings. My current program of research is aimed at developing a tailored message for preparing home hospice families for death. There is no research information on preparing families for death in the home. My dissertation research is focused on describing the materials and messages given to families to assist them in preparing for a home hospice death. The knowledge gained from this research will be used in conjunction with the existing data concerning family needs at the time of death to prepare a tailored message designed to prepare families for death in the home hospice setting. Such a message would assist nurses in adequately preparing families for home hospice death. Adequate preparation for death may affect the family members’ perception of both the end-of-life care and the death event itself and grieving.

Heather Royer , PhD, APRN-BC (to view CV)

My current program of research focuses on developing and testing a patient-centered intervention that is based on women's beliefs about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and STD testing. This interest stems from my clinical experience working as a nurse in an inner city emergency department and as a nurse practitioner in women's health settings. During my clinical experience it became apparent that many patients had misconceptions about STDs and STD testing. For example, I found that many young women believed that a Pap smear tests for all STDs. I was concerned about how this misconception and others may perpetuate the continued transmission of STDs. Using the Common Sense Model as the guiding framework, my F31 funded dissertation research focused on developing and establishing the psychometric properties of two instruments.  The first instrument (the ROSTD) is a measure of young women's representations (i.e., beliefs) about each of the eight major STDs. The second (the ROTEST) is a measure of young women's beliefs about the STD testing process.  My next steps include describing women’s beliefs about STDs and STD testing and then developing interventions that improve their knowledge and understanding of STDs and STD testing. My long-term goal is to improve the accuracy of women's beliefs about STDs and STD testing as a means to reduce STD transmission and improve sexual health among this population.