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Erin Miller, MSN’19, was honored with Vanderbilt's 2023 Early Career Professional Achievement Award during Reunion and Homecoming weekend Nov. 2-5. The award is given by the Vanderbilt University Alumni Association and recognizes alumni age 40 and under for their significant record of career achievement and promise for professional success. Both a certified pediatric nurse practitioner and a pediatric sexual assault nurse examiner, Miller was one of the first graduates from VUSN’s pilot VEP-SANE program. Today, her expertise as a pediatric SANE, child advocate and health care leader is recognized in more than 1,000 completed sexual assault exams and court testimony in more than 100 cases. Read More

Clinicians need to have a better understanding of the potential impact of patients’ anxiety sensitivity, or “fear of fear,” according to an article published in American Journal of Critical Care. When a patient has anxiety sensitivity, they misinterpret nonthreatening symptoms as threatening, assessing the potential meaning across physical, social or cognitive domains. These “what if” thoughts may trigger a spiral effect, stimulating the nervous system and resulting in stronger sensations and further catastrophic misinterpretations. Read More

The number of dedicated nurses entering the profession will increase, thanks to a $1.25 million pledge from the Conway-Welch Family Foundation to establish the Conway-Welch Second Degree in Nursing Scholarship at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing. This milestone gift, which will be awarded to a student enrolling in Vanderbilt’s new Master of Nursing program, was made in honor of Colleen Conway-Welch, the former dean of the school who died five years ago from pancreatic cancer. Read More

Vanderbilt doctor of nursing practice students who hope to become nursing faculty may take advantage of a $1.52 million grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration  Bureau of Health Workforce (E01HP28788), Nurse Faculty Loan Program. Vanderbilt University School of Nursing received the award to support… Read More

A new partnership with AARP Tennessee and the National Museum of African-American Music is allowing the Theraputic Music in the ICU program led by Vanderbilt School of Nursing Professor Ruth Kleinpell, PhD, FAAN, MCCM, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center Professor Joseph Schlesinger, MD, FCCM, to expand with outreach to veterans and older adults at long-term care facilities in Middle Tennessee. Read More

Mulubrhan Mogos, assistant professor of nursing, studies ways to reduce cardiovascular disease risk among women. He was recently quoted in a story with collaborator Monica Keith, assistant professor of Anthropology, who published insights into the complex factors contributing to maternal hypertension and health disparities in a paper titled, “Social Determinant Pathways to Hypertensive Disorders of Pregnancy Among Nulliparous U.S. Women” in the journal Women’s Health Issues. Read More

Makayla Cordoza, assistant professor of nursing, has won a multi-year grant of over $730,000 from the National Institute of Nursing Research. She will research how poor and disturbed sleep contributes to ICU delirium. More than one third of patients in the intensive care unit develop ICU delirium, an acute form of cognitive dysfunction that disproportionately increases the risk for worse outcomes and long-term cognitive impairment. Insufficient and disrupted sleep is also a known contributor to short and long-term neurocognitive deficits. Despite this, the sleep-delirium relationship has not been rigorously investigated, Cordoza wrote in the project abstract. Read More

For the fourth year in a row, the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing has won a Higher Education in Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education. The award honors VUSN’s commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion… Read More

Vanderbilt University School of Nursing has received a four-year, $2.8 million Health Resources and Services Administration Bureau of Health Workforce grant for a primary care nurse practitioner residency program that will recruit, train and retain primary care providers with a passion for helping rural and underserved communities. Associate Professor Pam Jones, BSN’81, MSN’92, DNP’13, FAAN, is the grant’s project director, with Associate Professor Christian Ketel, DNP’14, FNAP, serving as primary author and evaluator. Read More

The Vanderbilt University 2023 Fall Staff Assembly celebrated staff contributions to the university’s mission.  The School of Nursing’s D3 team (Senior Instructional Designer Diana Vasquez, Instructional Technologist Taylor Boll, Senior Instructional Designer Carrie Sennett, Media Services Manager Clay Sturgeon… Read More