Nursing Faculty Receive Pless Center Grants

The Muriel and Virginia Pless Center for Nursing Research at NYU College of Nursing has awarded grants to two nursing faculty members, Marie Boltz and Hongsoo Kim, for studies that address issues of older adult health care. The Pless Center, established in 1995, supports research programs at the college that focus on reducing health disparities in urban populations.
    Boltz will conduct a Web-based study that will begin with a “brainstorming session” among 400 stakeholders in the area of acute care for older adults, to develop a common understanding of quality of care. Boltz is practice director of NICHE (Nurses Improving Care for Health-System Elders), a program at the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing, based at the College of Nursing. With co-investigator Elizabeth Capezuti and project manager Nina Shabbat, she is reaching out to patients and their family members, former patients, and hospital staff—including physicians, nurses, and social workers—and asking them to provide their definitions of quality. Using the responses, Boltz and colleagues will develop a conceptual model that hospitals and researchers can use to ensure that all elements of quality are taken into account.
    Kim will explore how the level of nurse staffing in acute care settings relates to the incidence of three types of adverse events—pressure ulcers, hospital-acquired infections, and death—among older medical patients. More than half of all adult, non-obstetric hospital admissions are people age 65 or older. These older patients are often sicker, stay longer in the hospital, and expend more hospital resources than younger patients. Kim will analyze the 2004 California State Inpatient Database, which includes three million discharge records of adult patients from acute care facilities during that year. She’ll use data from California because the state keeps detailed records on nurse staffing and adverse events.