Dr. Courtney Sullivan, a Global Health Institute (GHI) faculty member and assistant professor at the Michigan State University College of Nursing, was awarded a one-year, $50,000 grant to support her research on the cross-cultural validation of pediatric cancer nursing quality systems.
The Young Investigator Grant is part of a series of $7 million in research grants distributed by the Rally Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to funding research for childhood cancers. Dr. Sullivan’s grant will fund her research to adapt and validate pediatric cancer nursing quality indicators in Chile. The study will be the first to branch from similar English-language studies Sullivan oversees in Malawi, the Philippines and Singapore. The expansion of the study in Chile will focus on cross-culturally adapting these English language systems into Spanish language contexts in four Chilean hospitals. Dr. Sullivan will work with Chilean nurse leaders in participating hospitals to implement nursing quality indicators using Donabedian's Quality-of-Care Framework, which looks at structures, processes and outcomes of nursing care delivery. Specifically, indicators of focus will be structural factors such as nurse staffing, processes such as pain assessment/management and chemotherapy safety checks, and outcomes such as pain control and infection rates.
By the study’s conclusion, Dr. Sullivan aims to have participating hospitals sustain the quality monitoring system to guide timely improvements in pediatric oncology nursing care.