Professional Practice Models in Nursing

Joanne R. Duffy, PhD, RN, FAAN, is an adjunct professor at the Indiana University School of Nursing, Indianapolis, Indiana, and executive vice president and senior consultant at QualiCare in Winchester, Virginia. Dr. Duffy's extensive career encompasses clinical, administrative, and academic roles. She has directed four graduate nursing educational programs, and has been a department chair, interim associate dean for research, and, most recently, a named endowed evidence-based practice and research professor. Dr. Duffy has held various administrative positions directing medical, rehabilitation, critical care, emergency, and transplantation nursing services at both community and academic medical centers. She also directed a nurse-led center for outcomes analysis, dedicated to improving the quality of cardiovascular services. She was a cardiovascular clinical nurse specialist with clinical experience in critical care and emergency nursing. Dr. Duffy has published extensively across the nursing literature, but is best known for her work in maximizing patient outcomes. She was the first to linknurse caring to patient outcomes, and has designed and tested multiple versions of the Caring Assessment Tool (CAT). She developed the Quality-Caring Model ©, a middle-range theory used in more than 45 U.S. health systems.Dr. Duffy was the recipient and principal investigator for two federally funded demonstration projects:Relationship-Centered Caring in Acute Care and Improving Safety and Quality in Vulnerable Acute Care Patients Through Interprofessional Collaborative Practice, and has been the principal investigator on externally funded studies of hospitalized older adults, those with heart failure, tool development, nurses' caring competencies, evidence-based practice, and academic-service partnerships. She has also consulted on studies related to organizational leadership and management of critical care units, patients' perceptions of safety, health literacy, and alarm safety. Dr. Duffy was a consultant to the American Nurses Association (ANA) in the development and implementation of the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI), and was the former chair of the National League for Nursing's (NLN) NursingEducational Research Advisory Council. Dr. Duffy is the author of numerous publications, including two books and several book chapters. Her book Quality Caring in Nursing: Applying Theory to Clinical Practice, Education, and Research received the American Journal of Nursing (AJN) Book-of-the-Year award in 2009. She is a former Commonwealth Fund Executive Nurse Fellow, a recipient of several nursing awards, a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, and she serves on several editorial review boards. Dr. Duffy currently teaches graduate-level nursing research and data analysis for clinical and administrative decision making; regularly consults with health systems regarding evidence-based practice, research, and professional practice model integration; and is a frequent guest speaker.