Geriatric Nursing: Growth of a Specialty

With five years in interviewed contributions from the pioneers of geriatric nursing who laid the foundations for the profession to the geriatric nurse leaders who continue the specialty today, we are given the opportunity to see first-hand how geriatric nursing began, evolved, and continues to flourish. Covering the scope of the specialty -how to become a geriatric nurse, what organizations and publications exist in the field, standards of practice, certification and licensure, and future directions?this text provides both inspirational stories of nursing and practical information on how you can find resources, develop ideas, and access research in order to become a successful geriatric nurse.

Priscilla Ebersole, PhD, RN, FAAN, has been involved in geriatric/gerontologic nursing for 35 years. She has written, with coauthors, nin textbooks on geriatric nursing. She is a professor emerita, retired from San Francisco State University School of Nursing in 1995. From 1981 to 1984 she acted as field director of the geriatric nurse practitioner project funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and administered by the Mountain States Health Corporation in Boise. In 1987 she was named Educator of the Year by the American College of Health Care Administration. In 1988, Dr. Ebersole was a visiting professor at Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where she occupied the Florence Cellar endowed gerontologic nursing chair. In 1997, Dr. Ebersole was inducted into the Hall of Fame at San Francisco State University. From 1991 until January 2006 she was the editor of the Geriatric Nursing Journal

.

Theris A. Touhy, ND, APRN, BC, is an Associate Professor in the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. Dr. Touhy has been a Clinical Nurse Specialist in gerontological nursing for 25 years, combining teaching and research with practice in the long-term care setting. She was the recipient of the Geriatric Faculty Award from the Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing/AACN in 2003 and the Marie Haug Award for Excellence in Aging Research, Case Western Reserve University, in 1998. She is coauthor, with Dr. Ebersole, Dr. Patricia Hess, and Dr. Kathleen Jett of the textbook Gerontological Nursing and Healthy Aging as well as the forthcoming 7th edition of Toward Healthy Aging.