'Excellence in Nursing'
Grady Presents Renfield Lecture at Rockefeller University
Photo: Will Ragozzino
National Institute of Nursing Research director Dr. Patricia Grady presented the Beatrice Renfield Lecture in Research Nursing recently at Rockefeller University.
The talk honors the late Beatrice Renfield, a philanthropist who, noted Dr. Barry Coller (physician-in-chief and vice president for medical affairs at Rockefeller University), believed that “excellence in nursing is an essential foundation for improving quality health care.”
The audience was made up of an interdisciplinary, multi-state group who share Renfield’s belief in the importance of nursing research, including established leaders in the field as well as early career researchers and doctoral students.
In her lecture, “Advancing Science, Improving Lives,” Grady discussed NINR and its role in support of the larger NIH mission. Grady provided an overview of NINR’s research portfolio, which is primarily clinical in nature and focuses on wellness and quality of life across the lifespan and spectrum of disease.
Noting that “a number of advances in the areas of genomics and other fields have allowed nurses to better understand the symptoms of chronic illness,” Grady described NINR’s symptom science research model. It guides research by identifying a complex symptom, characterizing it into a phenotype with biological and clinical data and applying cutting-edge methodologies to identify therapeutic interventions. A number of studies under way in NINR’s Division of Intramural Research are using this model, including research into the mechanisms of cancer-therapy-associated fatigue and biomarkers of traumatic brain injury.
In a Q&A session that followed, Grady discussed NINR’s research on social determinants of health, precision medicine and the need to properly manage pain.