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Reynolds Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence

Older Educated Man

Postdoctoral Education

Emerging scientific discoveries in aging science offer new insights and challenges for geriatric care across disciplines. National interdisciplinary initiatives encourage cross-disciplinary partnerships in biomedical interpretation for clinical research in a process called Translational Science. The earliest efforts have been aimed at bench-to-bedside translation of research, but the opportunities for interdisciplinary discussion and problem-solving beyond medicine have been sparse.

Geriatric translational research training at the Donald W. Reynolds Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence provides doctorally prepared faculty across the state with the resources and skills to focus on a problem in geriatric healthcare with relevance to aging in place, mine the research literature for evidence-based findings, and interpret their suitability for testing and application in the clinical setting. This training takes two forms:

A summer institute brings together postdoctoral nurses and interdisciplinary professionals to find research resources on topics of interest, form researchable questions, and develop new networks with multiple professionals from diverse geriatric backgrounds.

A year-long nursing Faculty Fellows mentoring program culminates in development of a pilot research proposal suitable for submission to test translational science questions or hypotheses dealing with care of older adults to support community-based aging in place.

Through these programs the Reynolds Center is helping faculty without previous geriatric expertise to develop competitive skills in writing research proposals and publications in this field.