Agility, Ardor, Alignment: Building a Sustainable Program of Research Testing Nurse-Led Models of Care

Agility, Ardor, Alignment: Building a Sustainable Program of Research Testing Nurse-Led Models of Care

Dr. Docherty is a nurse scientist whose over two decades program of research has focused on symptom management and healthcare decision-making for children, adolescents, young adults, and their families undergoing intensive and chronic treatment for life-limiting conditions and improving the quality of dying through palliative care interventions at end of life. Her passion for research stems from over 30 years of practice as a pediatric nurse and pediatric nurse practitioner. She is a well-respected research methodologist with expertise in data visualization, and qualitative and mixed methods approaches to study the complexity inherent in human responses to chronic illness. Dr. Docherty develops and tests nurse-led interventions built on a team science model that includes nurse scientists, physician-scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and methodologists as well as patients and their families. These studies are embedded in the culture of the health system ensuring rapid translation into practice models on completion. Dr. Docherty is MPI on two current R01s testing the efficacy of interventions to address palliative care caregiver needs in the ICU (R01 AG058915-01A1:2019-2024), and adolescent and young adult chronic illness self-management and transition using peer-mentoring (R01 NR018379-01:2019-2024). She brings her experience collaborating with interdisciplinary colleagues to lead large research teams conducting intervention studies to advance chronic illness symptom science and testing of multi-level interventions

Over the trajectory of Dr. Docherty’s career, she has contributed significantly to building research capacity and the training of nurse and physician-scientists. As Co-PI of the NIH-NINR-funded P-30 Symptom Science Center at Duke School of Nursing, she mentored faculty and postdoctoral trainees in the completion of their research projects that helped launch their research careers. As the Assistant Dean, Ph.D. Program (2018-2022) she led the building of the Ph.D. program to include cohorts of 8 to 10 new students annually. Under her leadership, the research support for PhD students increased including additional funding for pilot studies and funding for data analysts to extract electronic health record data. She has mentored over 30 PhD students, 5 DNP students, 2 post-docs, and 6 students from other disciplines (e.g., pediatric oncology), as they developed projects addressing chronic illness symptom and self-management. She currently serves as a mentor on K08 and other science trainee awards for four physician-scientists.

Dr. Docherty’s national reputation as a nurse scientist is evident in her status as a well-respected grant reviewer for NIH (NINR, NCI, NIA, NCCIH), as well as for multiple foundations. Her research awards, including the 2014 Southern Nursing Research Society Mid-Career Researcher Award, the 2020 Duke University School of Nursing Distinguished Contributions to Nursing Science Award, and the 2022 Council for the Advancement of Nursing Scientist Outstanding Nurse Scientist Award, signify her outstanding international contributions to pediatric and young adult chronic illness nursing.

Parking for this event is available for a fee in Trinity Garage (TRG) at the corner of MLK and Trinity, or at the Health Center Garage (HCG). If you need an accommodation to participate in this event or you are a faculty member who would like to bring a class, please contact Amber Shah at ashah@nursing.utexas.edu or 512-471-7964.