RESEARCH at a Glance Endowed chair positions are important because “they enable us to be competitive in attracting outstanding faculty members. They also give us an ability to maintain high levels of excellence in key areas over the long haul,” explained UCF Provost Dr. Dale Whittaker.
ENDOWED CHAIRS NURSING HAS SECOND MOST ENDOWED CHAIRS OF 12 UCF COLLEGES THE BERT FISH SCHOLAR UPGRADES HEALTH CARE FOR COMMUNITIES
Dr. Angeline Bushy
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ursing education and community health care are twin interests of Angeline Bushy, PhD. She has been advancing both for nearly two decades, as the Bert Fish Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair of the UCF College of Nursing on the Daytona regional campus.
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When Bushy arrived at UCF Daytona in 1996, surrounding Volusia County had just a halfdozen nurses with bachelor’s degrees. She became aware of just one nurse holding a master’s degree in local hospitals. Today, registered nurses with an associate degree from Daytona State College have well delineated paths to UCF’s RN to BSN and RN to MSN programs. The UCF Daytona campus also offers a four-year BSN nursing program. Higher education for nurses translates into higher quality health care for patients and communities, Bushy said. “Research shows that patient outcomes in hospital settings are improved when they have baccalaureate prepared nurses,” she said.
UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA
Bushy earned her doctorate at the University of Texas and came to UCF from the University of Utah, where she was an associate professor and coordinator of the master’s program in community health nursing. Her scholarly interests have focused on the many challenges of rural health care. By every measure, from numbers of physicians to availability of preventive care, sparsely populated regions tend to be underserved, she said. She currently is researching rural health clinics in Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) with a $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. She is co-investigator on the study led by Dr. Thomas Wan in
the College of Health and Public Affairs. An ACO focuses on disease prevention and management, with payments tied to keeping populations healthy. It is part of a growing effort to limit the need for costly, acute care in emergency rooms and hospitals. For that to be successful, community nursing must play a major role. “Primary care starts in the community,” Bushy said. “You may be a school nurse, a parish nurse or a nurse with an insurance company; nurses are working with communities and planning care for the people who live there.” •