Welcome New Faculty

Jennifer David, DNP’17, MSN’14, CPNP, Instructor
David is a pediatric primary care nurse practitioner who teaches in the PreSpecialty section of the MSN program. She has taught at the University of North Georgia, Berry College and Georgia State University and works in the anesthesia department at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. David also has a background in early childhood education and earned her Master of Science in Nursing at Vanderbilt through the ASN to MSN program. A recent VUSN DNP graduate, David focused her scholarly project on the implementation of pediatric asthma protocols.

Cristy DeGregory, PhD, Assistant Professor
DeGregory joined the School of Nursing from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, where she was a clinical assistant professor and associate graduate faculty. She specializes in gerontology and has interests in care for people with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, caregiver support and the use of simulation in nursing education. She utilizes positive psychology methodologies with caregivers and as an educator. DeGregory also publishes and presents on spiritual care, and is a member of the Health Care Chaplaincy Network. She teaches in the PreSpecialty program.

Diane Folk, DNP, CNM, NP, Instructor
Folk comes to Vanderbilt from the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She was a clinical faculty supervisor for residents, medical students, advance practice nursing students and BSN students and provided midwifery care for high-risk obstetrical patients at the SUNY Regional Perinatal Center. Folk also co-directed the Upstate College of Medicine’s MIRACLE elective, which provides medical students with experience in continuity of care by pairing them with pregnant women pre- and post-birth for 15 months. Prior to teaching, Folk spent almost a decade providing primary and midwifery care to women in a rural, underserved area. Her research interests include postpartum hemorrhage and hypertensive disorders in pregnancy. She teaches in the Nurse-Midwifery specialty.

Ruth Kleinpell, PhD, FAAN, FCCM, Independence Foundation Professor of Nursing Education, Assistant Dean for Clinical Scholarship
Kleinpell has conducted research in several areas of focus including roles of acute care nurse practitioners, outcomes of advanced practice nurses, quality of life of critically ill elders, and use of telehealth to promote post-operative recovery. She has received funding for several clinical projects including a project targeting hypoglycemia prevention, funded by the American Association of Critical Care Nurses; a falls prevention initiative, funded by the American Organization of Nurse Executives; and a project focused on improving workplace morale for nurses, funded by the Prince Foundation, among others.

Patricia Sengstack, DNP’10, RN-BC, CPHIMS, Associate Professor
Sengstack teaches informatics, with a focus on health information technology’s impact on patient safety, and is also a nursing informatics executive at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. An experienced nursing and technology expert, she formerly worked for the National Institutes of Health, where she served as deputy chief information officer and chief of Clinical Informatics for nine years. Most recently, she was the chief nursing informatics officer for the Bon Secours Health System. She is a past president of the American Nursing Informatics Association and serves on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s (ONC) Standards Committee. She currently co-chairs ONC’s consumer task force. Sengstack has published frequently and recently published an STTI book, “Mastering Informatics: A Healthcare Handbook for Success.”

Julia Steed, PhD(c)’17, MSN’10, FNP-BC, Assistant Professor of Nursing
Steed teaches health assessment and pharmacology in the Family Nurse Practitioner specialty. She practices in internal medicine/primary care, working with individuals with chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and kidney disease. She is experienced in integrative and functional medicine and frequently recommends alternative treatment options such as nutritional supplements and dietary protocols to patients with gastrointestinal, metabolic and endocrine disorders. Her research interests include the effectiveness of health promotion/risk-reduction strategies and identifying the influence of health determinants on related behavioral outcomes.

 

 

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