A Day in the Life of an Academic Geriatric Nurse
Ann Kolanowski, PhD, RN
Elouise Ross Eberly Professor
School of Nursing
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, Pennsylvania
Director, Hartford Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence at Penn State
As Director of the Penn State Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence, Ann Kolanowski, PhD, RN, employs innovative technological solutions to meet the center’s goals of preparing more geriatric nursing faculty committed to careers in teaching, especially in underserved areas.
Dr. Kolanowski at the local PBS station where she is creating a training video for an intervention for delirium in people who have dementia. Her student Niki Hill, a Hartford Pre-doctoral Scholar, is featured in the video interviewing older adults and explaining recommended guidelines.
Penn State has one of the largest nursing schools in the country, with about 1,500 nursing students at ten campuses across Pennsylvania. Many of these campuses are in rural parts of the state. The school offers degrees from the associate to the doctorate level and allows students to seamlessly matriculate from one level to the next. However, offering advanced degrees in rural areas can be challenging due to lower enrollment.
“We offer all of our geriatric nursing master’s level courses online or via videoconferencing,” says Dr. Kolanowski. This allows the school to deliver the master’s program to anyone across the state who wants to be able to teach at the associate’s or baccalaureate level. “We want to prepare people who can study and work where it’s really needed, like in rural areas,” she says.
“We want to prepare people who can study and work where it’s really needed, like in rural areas.”Videoconferencing is also used as a tool to bring faculty together to review academic journals. Faculty and students from the Penn State campuses and the University of Virginia participate. An article related to the care of older adults is chosen and discussed. “I’m amazed at how successful this has been,” says Dr. Kolanowski. “It’s really having an impact on practice.”
“Recruitment of nursing students is also a major priority,” says Dr. Kolanowski. To this end, Penn State, together with WPSU Public Broadcasting Production House, with funding from Johnson & Johnson, created a series of videos featuring leaders in the field of health care in order to recruit nurses to an exciting career in academic geriatrics. (http://www.hhdev.psu.edu/hartford/educators.html)
Dr. Kolanowski with nursing students in a dissertation seminar. Students at the Penn State campus in Hershey participate via videoconferencing. This videoconferencing technology is also used to bring nursing faculty from all the Penn State campuses together for a journal club that focuses on the care of older adults. Adriana Perez, PhD, RN, ANP ›