SCHOLAR DIRECTORY

Debra Sims is a career neonatal intensive care (NICU) nurse, having spent her years in a variety of management and leadership positions, as well as in her current position as a charge nurse and bedside RN as she completes her PhD. Leadership and coordination of her unit’s quality improvement efforts resulted in publications in the areas of discharge planning and elimination of catheter-related blood stream infections (CLABSIs), as well as web-based educational presentations for the Vermont Oxford Network, Pediatrix Medical Group, and the Agency for Health Care Research & Quality (AHRQ). Inclusion of families in improvement work is a passion of Mrs. Sims. While leading an interdisciplinary team in the planning and building of a new 66-bed single patient room NICU and coordinating the transition from an open-bay model to private rooms, families were included as part of the interdisciplinary team in designing the unit lay-out and planning and participating in moving day. While working with families, teen parents have become a focus for Mrs. Sims’ dissertation work; teen fathers in particular. While most parenting education is focused on teen mothers, Mrs. Sims’ dissertation will focus on a parenting education intervention for teen fathers and its effect on parenting confidence and parenting behaviors of these young men. Publication of a concept analysis of parenting self-efficacy arose from efforts to clearly define this concept in preparation for measurement in her dissertation work. Mrs. Sims looks forward to sharing results of her dissertation research in the future.