Teresa Panniers, PhD, RN, CRNP
Associate Professor
Assistant Dean, Master's/Post Master's division
Unit:
School of Nursing
Mail Stop: 3C4
Office Location: Robinson A361C
Phone: 703-993-1935
Email: tpannier@gmu.edu
Dr. Teresa Panniers is Assistant Dean for the Masters and Post-Masters Nursing Division and Associate Professor in the School of Nursing, College of Health and Human Services. Dr. Panniers previously taught in the nursing informatics program at New York University and at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. Dr. Panniers has 20 years experience in the field of nursing and healthcare informatics. Dr. Panniers presently teaches graduate nurses with emphasis on theory, method and technologic applications in nursing.
Dr. Panniers began her work in informatics in Upstate New York with her research in the area of clinical analysis related to prospective payment models for reimbursement of care to Medicare patients. Dr. Panniers continued her research with a greater focus on clinical decision-making during her graduate studies at the University of Rochester where she received her PhD in 1991.
Dr. Panniers has developed courses in informatics both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She has authored numerous articles and has contributed book chapters in the field of informatics. Dr. Panniers has served on the Board of Directors of Community Clinic, Inc., a managed care agency in Rockville, MD that is dedicated to providing primary care to the underserved population. In this capacity she has served as Chairperson of the Information Systems Subcommittee charged with the selection and purchase of an integrated clinical information system for the agency. Dr. Panniers also serves as a member of the chartered Biomedical Computing and Healthcare Informatics (BCHI) study section of the National Institutes of Health. She serves as a reviewer for informatics and research journals.
Dr. Panniers has been awarded an R01 grant from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) entitled Decision Support for Neonatal Intensive Care Nursing. Under the auspices of this grant, Dr. Panniers initiated work investigating the nature of decisions made by neonatal nurse practitioners and neonatologists with regard to feeding choices for premature infants. The goal of this research is to understand methods of modeling decisions made by health care practitioners and to build an automated decision support system to assist practitioners in providing quality care to patients. The study setting is the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) located in the Mercy Medical Center, an urban medical center in Baltimore, Maryland.
In the clinical setting, Dr. Panniers initially used ethnography as a method to explore the question of interest for this study was and then to observe care processes in the actual setting of the NICU. The research has shown that there are many categories of feeding choices used by practitioners when deciding when to feed an infant as well as what method to use when initiating feeding. A strength of the methods employed in this study, while focused on the field of neonatal care, is that they can also be generalized to decision models for other complex, significant clinical problems or for other populations of patients.
Dr. Panniers’ work has included both qualitative and quantitative methods as has resulted in the definition, classification and description of feeding terms used to depict feeding options for premature infants. The results of the qualitative findings combined with the results from the analysis of the textbooks and journals provided input into a comprehensive evidence-based knowledge base that will be used for a prototype decision support system to assist practitioners to make feeding decisions for premature infants.
Recent Publications:
Panniers, T. L. (2006). Methods in Informatics: Development of a multiattribute utility questionnaire for feeding decisions in the neonatal intensive care unit. In Park, H., Murray, P., & Delaney, C. (Eds.) Consumer-Centered Computer-Supported Care for Healthy People: Vol. 122, Studies in Health Technology and Informatics (pp. 124-128). Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Panniers, T. L. Teaching Meta-Synthesis: Summarizing Qualitative Research. (2006.) In Levin, R. F., & Feldman, H. R. (Eds.) Teaching Evidence-Based Practice in Nursing (59-98).
Bickford, C. L., Smith, K., Ball, M. J., Frantz, G., Panniers, T. L., Newbold, S. K., Knecht, K. L., Farish-Hunt, H., & Cortes-Comerer, N. (2005). Evaluation of a nursing informatics training program shows significant changes in nurses’ perceptions of their knowledge of information technology, Health Informatics Journal, 11(3), 225-235.
Educational Background
- PhD Nursing, 1991 - University of Rochester, Rochester, New York. Dissertation Research Topic: A Decision-Analytic Approach to Clinical Nursing.
- MS Nursing, 1979 - University of Rochester, Rochester, New York. Clinical Major: Adult Nurse Practitioner
- BS Health Science, 1976 ? Empire State College, Rochester, New York.
- AAS Nursing, 1972 ? Monroe Community College; Rochester, New York.