Publications by authors named "Maria Shirey"

Heart failure (HF) is a complex and chronic condition that requires ongoing management, and in patients with adverse social determinants of health (SDOH) disease management can become challenging. Food insecurity (FI), a common adverse SDOH, can have negative consequences for those living with HF. Heart failure and SDOH also have significant impacts on mental health and well-being.

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Nurse leaders depend upon resiliency skills to support their practice. It is important to provide opportunities for nursing students to learn, practice, and observe these skills, which are needed to navigate challenging work environments. This article describes the impact of a resiliency curricular component in a grant-funded BSN elective course, Concepts of Primary Care.

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Academic nursing prepares nurses for the future to deliver, improve, and innovate health care. Moving forward on this imperative requires nurse leaders to support diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts thus partnering with individuals, families, communities, and other sectors to advance health equity, reduce health disparities, and improve care. The purpose of this article is to describe the creation, launch, and evaluation of an Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in an academic nursing institution.

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Goal: Span of control is a multidimensional concept requiring a comprehensive definition that captures the complexities of the nurse manager's role in acute care settings. This concept analysis aimed to identify factors associated with span of control and provide a comprehensive definition outlining the breadth of this concept.

Methods: ProQuest, PubMed, and Scopus databases were used to search peer-reviewed literature addressing the span of control in acute care nurse management.

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Management of the COVID-19 pandemic required healthcare leaders and frontline workers to rapidly innovate and adjust to a new reality that has forever transformed nursing education and practice. Throughout the pandemic, key stakeholders in Alabama lobbied for transformations in clinical training practice that ultimately improved students' exposure to clinical environments and alleviated the pressure on practicing nurses and other healthcare workers during pandemic hospitalization surges. The present article highlights the key partners and regulatory innovations that led to these successes in Alabama.

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Healthcare disparites exist in cardiovascular care, including heart failure. Care that is not equitable can lead to higher incidence of heart failure, increased readmissions, and poorer outcomes. The Heart Failure Transitional Care Services for Adults Clinic is an interprofessional collaborative practice that provides guideline-directed medical therapy and education to underserved patients with heart failure.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Registered Nurses (RNs) play a crucial role in enhancing community healthcare but are often not fully utilized in primary care settings.
  • - Two nursing schools in Alabama launched a project aimed at strengthening the primary care RN workforce, which includes the creation of the Primary Care Clinical Mentoring Academy (PCCMA).
  • - The PCCMA provides comprehensive training for RN clinical mentors, combining lectures and interactive activities, and participants found it beneficial for improving their skills and job performance in mentoring roles.
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Addressing the social determinants of health (SDoH) to advance health equity for persons with heart failure is a complex endeavor. Best results are achieved in partnership with multiple sectors beyond just the health care industry. We describe the evolution of an academic-practice-community partnership addressing the SDoH to advance health equity for a population of underresourced heart failure patients.

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This article describes the association of COVID-19 on organizational attributes in primary care among 2 academic-practice partnership interprofessional collaborative practice (IPCP) clinics. Our team used a concurrent, triangulation repeated-measures study design to examine responses to the Survey of Organizational Attitudes of Primary Care (SOAP-C) instrument between January and December 2020. Analysis revealed statistically nonsignificant change over 12 months across all 4 subscales.

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Health care systems continue to experience the sequential aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, with major care access, quality, safety, financial sustainability, and workforce considerations. Yet, academic-clinical partnership opportunities exist for transformational change, even when efforts to respond to a pandemic seem insurmountable. A nursing partnership between an academic health center nursing school and university health system provided short- and long-term support for the nursing workforce shortage during a COVID-19 surge.

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Telehealth in health care delivery grew exponentially throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This growth occurred because of necessity, yet requires capacity building to maximize the technology's use. In this article, we discuss the development, implementation, and evaluation of a telehealth fair to build capacity in the use of telehealth technology within primary care nursing.

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Background: Primary care health settings provide access to services for underserved populations, yet baccalaureate (BSN)-prepared nurses are currently underutilized on the primary care health care team.

Problem: BSN curricula often focus on acute care settings for clinical experiences, and students may not be aware of the scope and impact the RN has in a primary care setting. This gap in experiences may lead to overlooking primary care employment opportunities.

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Academic-practice partnerships have the potential to improve clinical outcomes through joint initiatives focusing on nursing. Nurses at the bedside are able to greatly impact care, but often they lack the resources (time, knowledge, and expertise) to enact and facilitate quality improvement initiatives. Through an academic-practice partnership, academic and practice partners can work collaboratively to develop innovative evidence-based practice, quality improvement, and research projects.

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Background: Effective communication among healthcare teams is essential for ensuring handoff-related safety and quality care outcomes.

Purpose: The aim of this project was to improve patient safety through the reduction of communication-related errors on an acute hemodialysis unit (AHU) in an academic medical center. A target was set to reduce by 50 percent the communication-related errors using strategies to improve teamwork and communication.

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Background: Academic service-learning nursing partnerships (ASLNPs) integrate instruction, reflection, and scholarship with tailored service through enriched learning experiences that teach civic responsibility and strengthen communities, while meeting academic nursing outcomes.

Objective: This scoping review aimed to identify, appraise, and synthesize evidence of community focused ASLNPs that promote primary health care throughout the Americas region.

Methods: A systematic search of PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, Google Scholar, and LILACS English-language databases was performed in accordance with PRISMA guidelines.

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African American women experience higher lifetime exposure to chronic stressors, such as perceived racial discrimination. Clearly defining perceived racial discrimination in the pregnant African American population has the potential to better explain the phenomenon and how it relates to adverse birth outcomes such as preterm birth. The purpose of this concept analysis is to more clearly define perceived racial discrimination in the pregnant African American population using Rodgers' evolutionary method.

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Background: Nearly half of adults with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) experience HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorder (HAND), characterized by cognitive impairments in two or more cognitive domains, which can interfere with everyday functioning. Many factors are thought to influence such cognitive impairments in adults with HIV; one factor seldom examined is personality.

Objective: This study investigated the association between five major dimensions of personality (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) and cognitive function in older adults with HIV.

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Academic-practice partnerships are formalized relationships encouraged by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing to meet healthcare and societal needs. While Academic-practice partnerships have existed for decades, the process for evaluating their outcomes often lacks a robust, standardized structure. The purpose of this article is to describe one organization's process for developing and implementing an evaluation blueprint for appraising an Academic-practice partnership.

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Background: Heart failure is a leading cause of hospitalization among adults in the United States. Nurse-led interprofessional clinics have been shown to improve heart failure outcomes in patients with heart failure, specifically decreasing readmission rates. Yet, there is little information on the impact of nurse-led interprofessional collaborative practice within an underserved population with heart failure.

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COVID-19 places people with pre-existing cardiovascular disease at higher risk for mortality. Furthermore, COVID-19 disproportionately affects minorities and those experiencing adverse consequences of social determinants of health. Our report describes the practices put in place to care for underserved patients with heart failure and lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Heart failure (HF), a global public health problem affecting 26 million people worldwide, significantly impacts quality of life. The prevalence of depression associated with HF is 3 times higher than that of the general population. Evidence, though, supports the use of transitional care as a method to enhance functional status and improve rates of depression in patients with HF.

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Sustainability is an important concept in implementation science, yet little about sustainability is published in leadership journals. Leaders are charged on a daily basis with initiating programs that make a difference; however, they are often not well prepared to design effective strategies to sustain their efforts. In a value-based health care industry where facilitating access to care, enhancing the patient experience, improving health outcomes, and reducing the cost of care are imperative, creating sustainability strategies that achieve these results is key.

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