Nurses Contributions to Quality Health Outcomes

Dr. Baernholdt is the Associate Dean of Global Initiatives and Professor at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing. She was previously the Nursing Alumni Endowed Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and an Associate Professor at University of Virginia (UVA) School of Nursing. Both at UVA and at VCU she was involved in interprofessional practice and education training, projects, and programs involving students and health care practitioners. At UVA she served as Director for the Rural and Global Health Care Center and Global Initiatives. At VCU she was the founding Director of the Langston Center for Quality, Safety, and Innovation. Dr. Baernholdt is active on national and international committees and boards including past Chair of the American Academy of Nursing’s expert panel on quality health care and the US representative for 8 years on the International Council of Nurses, Core Steering Group Rural and Remote Nursing Network. Dr. Baernholdt has been a primary investigator and co-investigator on several federal grants using a diverse set of methods focused on healthcare quality. Her research focuses on how quality of care is defined and factors affecting quality of care in global rural areas across the healthcare continuum. She teaches courses and mentors national and international students and junior faculty in leadership, quality and safety, and health services research.Dr. Boyle is the Wyoming Excellence Endowed Chair in Nursing and Professor at the Fay W. Whitney School of Nursing, University of Wyoming (retired). She was previously Deputy Director of the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators® (NDNQI®) at the University of Kansas School of Nursing. She is a past Chair of the American Academy of Nursing’s expert panel on quality health care. For 30 years, Dr. Boyle has been leading improvement of the nursing work environment, nursing workforce, and patient safety through expertise in developing and evaluating standardized, value-driven metrics, and sustained investigation of relationships between nursing and patient outcomes. She has taught research, measurement, and quality improvement courses for doctoral students.