Pediatric critical care nursing expert, author and nurse scientist, Dr. Martha A.Q. Curley, will speak Tuesday, Oct. 16, at the University of Central Florida.
Curley will discuss the importance of linking what nurses do to improve patient outcomes, how nursing is typically measured within health care organizations, and how the Nightingale Metrics process works to engage bedside nurses in the identification and measurement of unit-specific, patient-centered outcomes. Her presentation is part of the annual Orlando Health Nursing Lecture series, established in 2010 through a $250,000 gift to the UCF College of Nursing.
The lecture – Nightingale 2012: Knowing, Describing and Measuring How Nurses Make a Difference – will be at 2:30 p.m. at the UCF FAIRWINDS Alumni Center. The free lecture, hosted by the UCF College of Nursing, is open to the public. Nurses will earn one contact hour of continuing education credit. Limited seats are still available. Registration is required at nursing.ucf.edu.
Curley says now is a unique time in health care with an emphasis on quality, safety and efficiency. Yet, she says, to be true to the legacy of Florence Nightingale, contemporary measurement in nursing should also call upon nursing-care processes that contribute to optimal patient outcomes.
Curley is the Ellen and Robert Kapito Professor in Nursing Science at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing in Philadelphia and a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. She holds a joint appointment in anesthesia and critical care medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and is a nurse scientist in the cardiovascular and critical care nursing program at Children’s Hospital Boston.
Her transdisciplinary collaborative efforts have enriched multiple programs of research in pediatric critical care. Her work has informed the practice of caring for critically-ill pediatric patients supported on mechanical ventilation, has provided better tools to measure important phenomena of concern in pediatrics, and has illuminated relationship-based care when partnering with parents of critically-ill children. Curley is also the primary architect of the AACN Synergy Model for Patient Care, a framework that strongly bases nursing care on patient and family needs, and has co-authored the textbook, “Critical Care Nursing of Infants and Children.”
Curley holds a Ph.D. from Boston College, a master’s degree in acute care pediatric nursing from Yale University, a bachelor of science from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and a diploma in nursing from Springfield (Mass.) Hospital School of Nursing.