Gerontological Nursing Interventions Research Center (GNIRC) - Regional Training Core

Director: Meridean Maas , PhD, RN, FAAN

The purpose of the Regional Training Core is to strengthen and develop gerontological nursing intervention research of senior and junior scientists through collaborative relationships among faculty at four Midwest universities: The University of Iowa, The University of Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Missouri-Columbia. In later years, these activities will be expanded to include faculty from two historically black colleges, Southern University and Alcorn State.

The goals of this collaboration are to achieve a greater variety of content and methods expertise in gerontological nursing research, to gain access to more heterogeneous elderly subjects, and to facilitate multi-site studies. Specific strategies to enhance communication, information exchange, resource exchange, and problem solving are being developed.

Competitive mentoring grants will be offered for junior faculty to propose a research focus, identify a mentor, and outline objectives and strategies for achieving mentoring and research goals. In cooperation with the Administrative Core, funds for pilot studies will be available to junior and senior faculty to complete preliminary work in order to be competitive for external funding.

Further, a grantsmanship short course will be developed collaboratively with faculty from the participating RTC sites and offered annually on the Web. Success with grantsmanship also will be fostered through the multiple strategies, including mock peer review sessions; lectures by nationally prominent senior scientists on advanced gerontological content and methods; and an annual summer methods camp rotated between the RTC sites.

Using these and other developing strategies, the RTC will:

• Increase collaboration among senior faculty and provide mentorship by experts to junior faculty in specific areas of gerontological intervention research, with special emphasis on minority investigators in later years;

• Increase inter-university communication to augment information sharing and extend and strengthen content, design, and methods expertise;

• Provide research training in focused areas of research methods and skills, highlighting issues unique to gerontological interventions research;

• Link with other Midwest university schools of nursing in locations representing a variety of minority and ethnic elderly populations to strengthen the sampling base for gerontological nursing research; and

• Facilitate multi-site studies testing nursing interventions for elders.