AACN News—February 2004

Vol. 22, No. 2, JANUARY 2005

9 AACN Members Inducted Into Academy of Nursing

Nine AACN members were recently inducted into the American Academy of Nursing, selected because of their outstanding contributions to nursing and healthcare. They are Tom Ahrens, RN, DNS, CS, Mary Jo Grap, RN, PhD, ACNP, Joan Liaschenko, RN, PhD, Rosemary Luquire, RN, PhD, CNAA, Leslie D. Mancuso, RN, PhD, Denise D. O’Brien, RN, MSN, APRN, BC, Shyang-Yun Pamela K. Shiao, RN, BSN, MSN, PhD, Mary Fran Tracy, RN, PhD, CCRN, CCNS, and Anne W. Wojner-Alexandrov, RN, PhD, CCRN.

Following is brief information about each of these inductees:

Tom Ahrens
Ahrens, a past member of the AACN Board of Directors, is a research scientist at Barnes Jewish Hospital, St. Louis, Mo. He is actively involved in technology application, particularly with respect to hemodynamic monitoring and capnography. He is coauthor of the text Hemodynamic Waveform Analysis and Essentials of Oxygen and led the international effort to develop a Web-based hemodynamic education program. In addition, Ahrens designed a communications program for clinicians and designed a Web site to assist families whose loved ones are hospitalized.

Mary Jo Grap
Grap is known for her research in pulmonary critical care nursing, with a focus on airway management, mechanical ventilation and sedation. Her more than 40 publications and 50 international, national and local presentations have directly impacted the nursing care of critically ill patients, especially those requiring mechanical ventilation. She developed standards for the use of pulse oximetry for AACN’s "Protocols for Practice.” She is co-author of the Richmond Agitation Sedation Scale, considered to be the first in a second generation of improved sedation assessment tools for the critically ill.

Grap is associate editor of the American Journal of Critical Care writing research summaries that provide practical research applications for the clinician. As a licensed acute care nurse practitioner, she developed and implemented a successful mechanical ventilation weaning protocol and consults with critical care clinicians and researchers to enhance evidence-based care. She is also a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and was awarded the prestigious 9A Designator for Excellence in Critical Care Nursing by the surgeon general of the Army.

Joan Liaschenko
Liaschenko is an associate professor in the Center for Bioethics and School of Nursing at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches ethics to graduate nursing students.

Her research and teaching focus on the morality of nursing work. Specifically, she is interested in how nursing work shapes nurses’ moral concerns, the language they use to articulate them and how they seek to resolve them. Currently, she is studying the barriers that ICU nurses experience in including families in end-of-life decision making, a study funded by AACN.

Liaschenko is co-editor of Nursing Philosophy.

Rosemary Luquire
Luquire is senior vice president for patient care and chief quality officer at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, Houston, Texas. She has developed and evaluated unique models of care through the application of research findings into practice. Her multidisciplinary outcomes management model, which has resulted in reduced mortality and infection rates and enhanced the quality of life in diverse patient populations, has been replicated internationally.

She has gained an international reputation in developing methods that impact patient outcomes with demonstrable evidence that validates the importance of advanced nursing practice.

Leslie D. Mancuso
Mancuso is president and chief executive officer of JHPIEGO, an international health organization affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md., that provides leadership in building partnerships to enhance the quality of healthcare services for women and families. She holds an adjunct faculty appointment at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and serves on the school’s Advisory Council and Global Task Force.

Before joining JHPIEGO, Mancuso led international operations for Project HOPE, an international health education organization committed to teaching health professionals in all aspects of healthcare. She is a recognized international business leader with a track record of success for bringing accountability and navigating change in the international nonprofit world.

Denise D. O’Brien
O’Brien is a leader in the specialty of perianesthesia nursing and is a past president of the American Society of PeriAnesthesia Nurses. She is a clinical nurse specialist in the postanesthesia care unit at the University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor.

She has presented extensively across the United States and internationally on perianesthesia nursing topics and is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters. She has been editor of the Journal of PostAnesthesia Nursing and the Journal of Perianesthesia Nursing.

O’Brien is currently the ASPAN liaison to the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation and ASPAN’s Information Technology liaison.

Shyang-Yun Pamela K. Shiao
Shiao is at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Nursing, where her unique research program is focused on the needs of preterm infants during the period of critical illness.

Shiao has contributed to practice knowledge about appropriate oxygen saturation levels for preterm infants, factors affecting the accuracy of pulse oximetry and the effects of indwelling nasal gastric tubes on infant feeding abilities and oxygenation. In addition, she has contributed to nursing science for optimal functional oxygenation, considering hemoglobin variations and mutations during ventilator support in newborns.

She has been extremely active in providing consultation to international nursing organizations and is a reviewer for research societies and nursing journals.

Mary Fran Tracy
Tracy is a critical care clinical nurse specialist at Fairview-University Medical Center, Minneapolis, and an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing. Known for her research in complementary and alternative therapies in critical care, her national survey of critical care nurses’ attitudes and use of these therapies resulted in multiple publications. A current member of the AACN Certification Corporation Board of Directors, she previously served as secretary of the AACN Board of Directors. She was cofounder and charter president of the Minnesota Affiliate of Clinical Nurse Specialists, which under her leadership became the first national affiliate of the National Association of Clinical Nurse Specialists.

Anne W. Wojner-Alexandrov
Wojner-Alexandrov is director of outcomes research at Clarian Health Partners, Indianapolis, Ind., and a past president of AACN.

Her book, titled Outcomes Management: Applications to Clinical Practice, is considered the definitive source for starting and enhancing an outcomes measurement and management initiative. She has been honored for her work by the American Stroke Association and the American Heart Association, and currently serves on the board of the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, the advisory board of the National Stroke Association and on the Council of Cardiovascular Nursing’s Stroke Council.

AACN News—February 2004—People

Vol. 22, No. 2, JANUARY 2005