Dinner Presentation: “The Role of Nurses as Innovators in Health Care”

HARRIET KITZMAN, PHD, RN, FAAN

Senior Associate Dean for Research

University of Rochester
 

Harriet Kitzman is a professor of Nursing and Pediatrics at the University of Rochester. Shes serves as senior associate dean for Research, and is director of the Center for Research Implementation and Translation, one of four centers of the University of Rochester Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Dr. Kitzman was a leader in the early development of the nurse practitioner role and is a national/international consultant on the nurse practitioner role and its impact. She was also a pioneer in the development of the model that unified research, education, and practice in university schools of nursing. Known best today for the research she has conducted since the early 1980’s on nurse home visiting interventions for low income mothers and their infants, she is an authority on the effects of nurse home visitation on first-time mothers and their children. With a focus on the economically disadvantaged, her program of research has had significant impact on both individual care and on health care policy nationally and internationally, with broad program dissemination through the Nurse Family Partnership Service Office and recognition as one of the American Academy of Nursing’s Edge Runner Programs. Based on an ecological perspective, the longitudinal databases developed from the program’s three randomized trials over a 30-year period provide exceptional opportunities to continue learning about the mechanisms through which early care of mothers and infants and their environments affect the life course of families and children. Dr. Kitzman holds multiple awards and has served on a number of national and local policy committees, including the Board of Children, Youth and Families of the American Academies of Science/Institute of Medicine. She was a charter member of the NSCF study section of the National Institute for Nursing Research.

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Examine the role of professional nurses as innovators in the health care setting.

1. Describe opportunities for nurses to make innovative contributions to health

care.

2. Discuss the future roles for nurses in an expanding healthcare system.