Grossman Sheila - Gerontological Nurse Certification Review

Meredith Wallace, PhD, APRN-BC, ANP, completed her BSN degree magna cum laude at Boston University. She earned an MSN in medical-surgical nursing with a specialty in geriatrics from Yale University and a PhD in nursing research and theory development from New York University. During her time at NYU she was awarded a predoctoral fellowship at the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing. In this capacity she became the original author and editor of the series Try This: Best Practices in Geriatric Nursing. In 2001, she won the Springer Publishing Company Award for Applied Nursing Research. She was the managing editor of the Journal of Applied Nursing Research and is currently the research brief editor for the journal.

Wallace is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters. She authored Prostate Cancer: Nursing Assessment Management and Care (2002), which won an American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award. Preceding this, she was the associate editor of the Geriatric Nursing Research Digest (2002), and she was the associate editor of the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Nursing Research (2006), both of which also won American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Awards. She is a recipient of the Eastern Nursing Research Society/John A. Hartford Foundation junior investigator award. She is an adult nurse practitioner and currently maintains a practice in primary care with a focus on chronic illness in the elderly.

She is currently an associate professor at Yale School of Nursing, in New Haven, Connecticut. Her research interests focus on the psychosocial needs of men with prostate cancer, especially those undergoing active surveillance. Sheila Grossman, PhD, APRN-BC, FNP, is a professor of nursing and specialty director of the family nurse practitioner track at Fairfield University School of Nursing. She graduated from the University of Connecticut with a BS degree in nursing, received her MS degree as a respiratory clinical nurse specialist from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a postmasters degree as a family nurse practitioner from Fairfield University, and her PhD in professional higher educational administration from the University of Connecticut. She has multiple years as a clinician on a variety of medical, surgical, and critical care units and presently practices as a family nurse practitioner in primary care. She teaches pathophysiology and pharmacology, medical and surgical nursing, critical care nursing, and leadership and management to undergraduate students and advanced physiology and pathophysiology, leadership, and adult health to graduate students.

She is the coauthor of The New Leadership Challenge: Creating a Preferred Future for Nursing, which is in its third edition (2008) and has received an American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award for Mentoring in Nursing: A Dynamic and Collaborative Process (2007). She is the author of multiple chapters and journal articles on leadership, mentoring, gerontology, adult health, and other topics. Her research interests focus on symptom management in palliative care, leadership, and adult patient outcome studies.

Meredith Wallace, PhD, APRN-BC, ANP Sheila Grossman, PhD, APRN-BC, FNP

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Copyright 2008 Springer Publishing Company, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Springer Publishing Company, LLC. Springer Publishing Company, LLC 11 West 42nd Street New York, NY 10036 www.springerpub.com Acquisitions Editor: Allan GraubardProduction Editor: Julia RosenCover design: Joanne E.

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Printed in the United States of America by Bang Printing. This book is dedicated to Mathy Mezey, PhD, RN, FAAN, professor of nursing education at New York University College of Nursing and director of The John A. Hartford Foundation Institute for Geriatric Nursing, for her lifelong love and passion for geriatric nursing excellence and her consistent recognition of certification as the benchmark for excellence in geriatric nursing care.

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Contents

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Foreword

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For several decades, policy experts and healthcare professionals have made projections regarding the coming baby boomer bubble of an aging American population.

The recent Institute of Medicine report, Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce, details the dramatic changes in the size and composition of the aging American population and the challenges this will create for health professionals of all kinds. Those projections have come to fruition, creating an urgent need for health care professionals and nurses in particular to have a strong base of knowledge and skills in care of the older adult. Demographic realities will create a doubling of adults over the age of 65 in the very near term, adding to the rapidly increasing number of individuals in this country who are termed the oldest old. Amazingly, Hallmark Cards reports that annually it sells over 85,000 cards for centenarian birthdays. The aging of America has created a dynamic and changing perspective on aging. Older adults are living longer while maintaining active and full employment, social, and community lives.

However, this longevity is accompanied by a concurrent increase in chronic illnesses treated with sophisticated technological and pharmacological interventions. This enormously complex array of treatments creates the need for a health professional workforce that is prepared to meet the unique physiological and psychosocial needs of older adults. The unique skill sets that are required to provide safe, high quality and effective care to older adults are not intuitively acquired, but rather come only from a focused approach to developing new views and knowledge that will shape and define how care will be delivered to the older adult. Unfortunately, despite the growth in the population of older adults, the nursing profession has not seen a concomitant increase in the proportion of the nursing workforce with a specialization in geriatrics. However, increasingly nurses and other professionals are seeking the specific skill sets necessary to deliver high quality care to older adults. Much of the enhanced focus on geriatrics comes as a result of the important and substantial support that has been made available to the nursing profession by the John A.

Hartford Foundation. Through this support, an enhanced focus on both geriatric practice and research has blossomed in the profession and nursing professionals have increasingly sought the specific knowledge and skills necessary. As they seek this knowledge, they also seek the professional validation represented by certification by a national body as a specialized geriatric clinician. Certification is an external validation of competence to meet specific and important needs is the hallmark of excellence in nursing practice. This new publication is an important addition to the resources available for nurses who seek certification as a geriatric clinician. This resource, designed for the generalist baccalaureate-educated nursing clinician who desires validation of expert knowledge and skills for care of the older adult, also recognizes the reality of practice.