Four 4 Kentucky: Strategic Faculty Hires Advance the College’s Mission for Excellence in Research, Education and Practice
Step back in time to 2014. The College of Nursing was in the middle of searching for a dean. The College’s Interim Dean, Patricia B. Howard, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, was negotiating with Norton Healthcare to expand the College’s DNP Program to five cohorts of Norton’s baccalaureate staff nurses. The demand for nursing education—especially post-master’s level certificate programs—was steadily rising.
With the needs of the people of Kentucky and the Commonwealth’s nursing workforce in mind, Dr. Howard identified a number of important areas that required the strategic hiring of new faculty, including adult-gerontology, acute care pediatrics and substance abuse. Dr. Howard’s goal was to pass the baton to the new dean while running at top speed, and she did just that by hiring Drs. Carol Thompson, Amanda Fallin-Bennett, Dianna Inman and Sheila Melander.
Sheila Melander and Carol Thompson
Back in 2014, Professor Sheila Melander, PhD, APRN, ACNP-BC, FCCM, FAANP, assistant dean of graduate faculty affairs and MSN and DNP Program director, ran into Dr. Howard shortly after giving a presentation at a large national nursing conference.
“I hear you’re teaching at the University of Tennessee, but you’re a Kentucky girl,” says Dr. Melander, recounting Dr. Howard’s words. “What are you doing for the Big Orange that you can’t do for the Big Blue?”
At the time, Dr. Melander was president-elect of the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties (NONPF), teaching at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center in Memphis and practicing acute care interventional cardiology in Owensboro, Kentucky. Dr. Melander already knew Professor and Director of Wilmore Faculty Practice Sharon Lock, PhD, APRN, FNAP, FAANP, from committee work they had done together in NONPF and began a conversation with Dr. Howard about opportunities at the College. Dr. Melander says she was particularly inspired by the Norton initiative and its potential.
Dr. Melander states, “I loved the idea of the College having a pioneering opportunity to make a major difference in the health and wellbeing of the entire Commonwealth. Norton has four hospitals in Louisville and probably close to 100 outpatient clinics. The ability to impact that level of care was really exciting.”
In conversations with Dr. Howard about the Norton initiative, Melander saw another level that impacted not just Norton Healthcare, but also all primary nurse practitioners across Kentucky practicing in acute care settings.
“To the medical community, a nurse practitioner is just a nurse practitioner. However, we have specific boards for specific patient populations that allow us to practice in those areas, and that has professional as well as patient safety implications.”
Dr. Melander led a national initiative that produced two white papers that have been adopted by all state boards of nursing to help differentiate scope of practices and help employers select the right provider for their patent population. At that time, Associate Professor and Adult Gerontology/Acute Care Nurse Practitioner DNP Track Coordinator Melanie Hardin-Pierce, DNP, APRN, RN, ACNP-BC, was the only acute care nurse practitioner on faculty and was in the middle of a major curriculum change to provide a path for nurse practitioners to earn a certificate in adult gerontology acute care. In Dr. Melander’s discussions with Dr. Howard, it became clear that more hands were needed.
One pair of hands was Professor Carol Thompson, PhD, DNP, RN, CCRN, ACNP-BC, FNP-BC, FCCM, FAANP, FAAN. Dr. Melander was a former mentee of Dr. Thompson’s, and the two worked together in Tennessee.
Dr. Thompson is a trail blazer.
She was the second nurse to be president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, which is usually led by physicians. She was also the first acute care nurse practitioner on the national board of directors of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses, was the first acute care nurse practitioner to serve on the Tennessee Board of Nursing and was among the first 100 nurses to be certified as an acute care nurse practitioner.
Dr. Thompson was enthusiastic about the possibilities presented by the Norton initiative as well as the adult-gerontology acute care nurse practitioner curriculum project. Both Dr. Thompson and Dr. Melander made the move to UK, and it was just in time.
“The severity of illness is increasing in hospitals, and there is a great need for this role,” says Dr. Thompson. “It’s a growing discipline and Kentucky had a shortage. Patients are becoming more unstable and acute and need that level of care, yet our workforce is not large enough.”
“Bringing Sheila and Carol on board proved to be extremely providential,” says Dr. Howard. “The adult-gerontology acute care practitioner program more than doubled in demand since we brought them in.”
“Without Sheila and Carol, there is no way that we would have been able to meet our enrollment demand in our BSN-DNP Program or our post-graduate certificate program for adult gerontology acute care nurse practitioners. They have had a huge impact on the nursing workforce in Kentucky.”
In addition to teaching, Dr. Melander later became assistant dean of Graduate Faculty Affairs and MSN and DNP Program director about a year after coming to the College, overseeing seven different tracks of study in the DNP Program and driving forward opportunities for graduate students to impact communities all around the Commonwealth through remote patient management or telemedicine.
“I’m really seeing the future of where our outreach can be,” says Dr. Melander regarding telemedicine. “The capabilities are changing daily with technology, and the increased opportunities for access to care are exciting. The students have a real opportunity to impact underserved communities, both in rural and urban areas, in ways that we haven’t been able to before.”
Dianna Inman
“The mentorship that you get here is incredible, and I wanted to be part of it,” says Assistant Professor Dianna Inman, DNP, APRN, RN, CPNP, PMHS, PMHNP, about her decision to join the CON faculty.
A pediatric nurse practitioner, Dr. Inman filled a long-standing need to support evidence-based practice approaches with children at the Kentucky Children’s Hospital and bring her pediatric expertise to the College’s curriculum. That expertise includes tremendous clinical experience in developmental/ behavioral pediatrics.
After joining the faculty, she quickly became dual-certified as a psych-mental health nurse practitioner and was awarded a $758,459 grant to tackle the challenge of alcohol use in Kentucky patient populations. Dr. Inman credits the College’s research support staff and the gift of time in her research success.
“Allowing faculty time to create and write is critical for a research-intensive academic setting,” says Dr. Inman. “Our research office—Dr. Tom Kelly and his staff—were phenomenal in making sure I had the resources I needed to be successful in writing the grant. That mentorship was excellent and was key to being awarded the grant.
Individuals are often unaware that the amount of alcohol they are consuming is a health risk, and this problem often begins early. One in three children will have a drink before they enter the eighth grade, says Dr. Inman, and the earlier an individual begins to drink places them at greater risk of having a drinking problem in the future. Her three-year grant project, sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), is designed to teach both undergraduate and graduate nursing students how to screen for alcohol use and provide a brief intervention among primary care patients.
“By screening, we raise awareness,” says Dr. Inman. “If someone is over the recommended amounts, a provider can initiate a conversation using concepts from motivational interviewing, raising what a patient’s goals are in life to help them see how drinking might be interfering with that. Then we provide steps and goals. The provider helps facilitate that process by assessing their readiness, motivation and confidence to change.”
Through the grant, Dr. Inman is also developing a creative online continuing education portal with simulated modelpatient avatars to practice screening, intervention and offering a referral for further treatment. This gives busy community primary care providers throughout Kentucky and the nation a convenient and high-quality continuing education option that profoundly impacts their patient population.
“In a very short period of time, Dianna has expanded her clinical practice expertise and continues to write grants that address needs of the Kentucky patient population and Kentucky providers,” says Dr. Howard. “She brings that wealth of research and practice expertise with her into the classroom as well.”
Amanda Fallin-Bennett
Assistant Professor Amanda Fallin-Bennett, PhD, RN, is a homegrown Kentucky nursing researcher with a great passion for the Bluegrass. After completing her PhD at UK, she went to work with Stanton Glantz, PhD, one of the world’s leading tobacco researchers, as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California-San Francisco’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. After completing this three-year postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. Fallin-Bennett was able to bring that knowledge and experience back home.
“Kentucky has very high smoking rates, and we have a long way to go. There isn’t a better place to impact the most change,” says Dr. Fallin-Bennett.
As a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH, pronounced “BIRCH”) Scholar, Dr. Fallin-Bennett has cultivated research-focused community partnerships with organizations like the YMCA and Chrysalis House, a home for women with substance use disorders who are pregnant and parenting. With her co-primary investigator Kristin Ashford, PhD, WHNP-BC, FAAN, associate professor and assistant dean of Research, director of Scholars in Nursing Pathway and coordinator of the Undergraduate Research Intern Option, and Ellen Hahn, PhD, RN, FAAN, professor and director of Bridging Research Efforts and Advocacy Toward Health Environments (BREATHE), Dr. Fallin-Bennett developed a program that offers a 90-minute exercise and tobacco treatment program.
This spring, Dr. Fallin-Bennett began work on a March of Dimes grant to to have perinatal wellness navigators— women who have also has struggled with smoking while pregnant—to comprehensively assess pregnant mothers who smoke and help them overcome barriers that are preventing them from quitting.
“Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable adverse outcomes in pregnancy,” says Dr. Fallin-Bennett. “That includes preterm birth. March of Dimes is interested in preterm birth, and reducing tobacco use is a priority.”
Dr. Fallin-Bennett is an affiliate of the Disparities Research Equalizing Access for Minorities (DREAM) Center headed by Associate Professor and Director of Diversity and Inclusivity Jenna Hatcher, PhD, MPH, RN. Dr. Fallin-Bennett is also on the advisory board for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) LGTBQ Health Link. She is the vice president of Voice of Hope Lexington, a nonprofit organization that supports people recovering from addiction. She has also served on the College’s strategic planning committee for diversity and is a Diversity and Inclusivity ambassador.
All four of the 2014 faculty hiring cohort have contributed dramatically to the reputation of the College and its ability to drive forward the mission of the College. For the woman who received the baton, there is one primary person to thank.
“Pat Howard had the foresight to see the direction we needed to go,” says Janie Heath, PhD, APRN-BC, FAAN, dean and Warwick Professor of Nursing, of her predecessor and this cohort of strategic hires. She knew we needed to assimilate a stellar team to move this agenda forward with our new academic model of clinical partnership, as well as our research and scholarly practice.”
