Cross Country Nursing

Strengthening Ties Between Research and Hospital Nursing

Twenty-two years later, she’s still there, only now she boasts a PhD degree and a critical care clinical nurse specialist (CNS) certification while serving as associate chief nurse researcher and a perianesthesia CNS.

“Basically, I came to UCSF and never left,” laughs Stannard.

That’s a good thing for both the School of Nursing and UCSF Medical Center because Stannard’s story mirrors an important shift in nursing: the tightening connection between the ivory tower and the practice setting or, as Stannard puts it, “diminishing the dichotomy between academia and service.”

It was at Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University School of Nursing that Stannard began acquiring the basic skills she needed in her chosen field, a process she continued at the University of Michigan Medical Center and in Los Angeles at the Cedars-Sinai and UCLA medical centers. Her experiences as a staff nurse in the surgical ICU and the postanesthesia care unit cemented her interest in critical care nursing. When she arrived at UCSF a few years later, she jumped at the opportunity to hone her expertise.

While continuing her work at the medical center, Stannard pursued a master’s degree in critical care nursing at UCSF. It was there she crossed paths with Patricia Benner, RN, PhD, FAAN, now professor emerita, whose 1984 book From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice

Eventually, Benner sponsored Stannard when she entered the School of Nursing’s doctoral program in 1991. Stannard also became one of two co-investigators in a Benner research project to develop curricula and teaching strategies that would help nurses and nurse-educators connect background science and technology with the clinical and ethical judgments that expert nurses make when caring for patients and families. The work yielded a book, an article and an educational CD-ROM that is still in use today.

During that time, Stannard also discovered what would ultimately become her area of expertise in clinical practice – perianesthesia nursing – while working as a per-diem nurse in UCSF Medical Center’s Post-Anesthesia Care Unit. The combination of research, teaching (she served as a teaching assistant at the school during this time) and clinical practice was a happy one for Stannard.

After completing her doctorate in 1997, Stannard spent a year as an assistant adjunct professor at the UCSF School of Nursing. Then she moved on to San Francisco State University’s School of Nursing, where she became an assistant professor and, ultimately, a tenured associate professor teaching both undergraduate and graduate nursing students.