SCHOLAR DIRECTORY

Keshia Kotula is an expert critical care nurse who has cared for a wide range of high acuity, seriously ill patients and their families for the past 7 years. She is pursuing a PhD in Nursing Education at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Ms. Kotula’s research interests focus on models of critical care palliative and end-of-life care integration and their effects on informal (family) and formal caregivers of patients with life-limiting illness. Her research focus aligns with the need for evidence-based interventions and models of care to improve the care of dying patients and support burdened caregivers. Ms. Kotula graduated with honors (magna cum laude) with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from North Dakota State University (NDSU) in 2011 and a Master of Science, nurse educator track, from NDSU in 2015. While pursuing her master’s degree, she studied compassion fatigue among critical care nurses and developed an educational module on compassion fatigue recognition and prevention. Ms. Kotula presented her scholarly work on compassion fatigue, burn-out, nurses’ self-care, and end-of-life care in the critical care setting at local and regional venues. She recently completed the ELNEC (End of Life Nursing Education Consortium) Core Train the Trainer program and was inducted in Sigma Theta Tau International (STTI) in 2013. Ms. Kotula currently works as a graduate assistant at UNLV. She has held roles as a pre-nursing academic advisor and as an Assistant Professor of Practice at NDSU.