Yale Bulletin
and Calendar

January 25-February 1, 1999Volume 27, Number 18




























Nursing School has established its
first Center for Excellence

To celebrate the opening of its first Center for Excellence, the School of Nursing (YSN) will hold a convocation on Tuesday, Feb. 2, at 3 p.m. in the school's facility at 100 Church St. South.

The Center for Excellence in Chronic Illness Care has been established at YSN to study how chronic illness affects patients and families, and to develop strategies to help these individuals achieve a better quality of life. The center's work will focus on AIDS/HIV, cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

The new center will be directed by Ruth McCorkle, chair of the doctoral program at YSN. An international leader in cancer nursing, education and cancer control research, McCorkle has done landmark work on the psychosocial ramifications of cancer. Author of the award-winning textbook "Cancer Nursing," she was the first research chair of the Oncology Nursing Society and was a charter member of that organization, as well as of the International Society of Nurses in Cancer Care. She is a member of the American Academy of Nursing and the Institute of Medicine. In 1993 she was named Nurse Scientist of the Year by the American Nurses Association.

The keynote speaker at the Feb. 2 convocation will be Patricia Benner, professor of physiological nursing at the University of California at San Francisco, who will address the role of clinical scholarship in chronic illness care. Benner is an internationally known researcher whose expertise includes the interrelated areas of health, stress and coping, and her work has had great influence on clinical practice and clinical ethics. She is the author of eight books, most recently "Clinical Wisdom and Interventions in Critical Care: A Thinking in Action Approach."

The convocation is open to all, but those planning to attend should contact Nicki Tillman at 737-2420.

The opening of the Center for Excellence coincides with YSN's 75th anniversary. When the school opened its doors in 1924, it was the first to educate nurses on the university model, rather than by simple apprenticeship. Today the school offers master's, post-master's and doctoral programs to educate advanced practice nurses and nurse researchers. Catherine Lynch Gilliss, the school's eighth dean, has focused her research on how patients and their families recover from chronic and life-threatening illness. When Gilliss assumed the deanship in July of 1998, she stated that one of her chief goals was using the school's tradition of clinical scholarship to increase YSN's contribution to the growing body of nursing science.