Two internationally renowned family nursing scholars will headline the inaugural forum of the Glen Taylor Nursing Institute for Family and Society Wednesday through Friday, Nov. 4-6, at Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Janice M. Bell and Lorraine M. Wright will tell Minnesota State Mankato School of Nursing faculty members and students how to make “family” the center of nursing practice. The first Taylor Institute forum starts at 10 a.m. Nov. 4 in the university’s Centennial Student Union.
“The Glen Taylor Nursing Institute is the result of a wonderful gift to the University from Glen and Becky Taylor,” said Minnesota State Mankato President Richard Davenport. “The Taylors envisioned an institute where innovative ideas, policies and educational models could be developed, tested and disseminated to improve family health across the U.S. and the world. This is the only institute in the nation with such a mission, and I am grateful to the Taylors for making it possible.”
The institute also aims to identify gaps in health-care systems, create systems that better meet the needs of diverse families, develop partnerships to promote innovative nursing practices, and study solutions to health issues.
It is a patron sponsor of the newly created international professional organization, the International Family Nursing Association. Seventeen nations are represented in the new organization’s membership, and organizers expect representation from many more countries in coming weeks.
The institute was founded in 2008, when Glen and Becky Taylor pledged $7 million to the School of Nursing for the nursing institute, a new endowed faculty chair and doctoral fellowships in nursing.
The forum’s two speaker/facilitators, Janice Bell and Lorraine Wright, both are PhD registered nurses and professors emeriti at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. They present workshops to and consult with health care professionals worldwide.
In 1986, Wright, Bell and Wendy Watson Nelson started a unique Family Nursing Unit outpatient clinic at the university. Their work with families at the clinic provided ideas for teaching, research and scholarship, and resulted in development of several practice models for family-focused care, including the Illness Beliefs Model, a clinical intervention for reducing illness suffering in families.
Wright, a long-time University of Calgary nursing faculty member, founded the university’s Family Nursing Unit and directed it for 20 years. She is co-author of two books and more than 60 articles, and is a lecturer, consultant and marriage and family therapist.
She has done research on beliefs and illness, suffering and spirituality and family interventions, and has made more than 300 national and international conference presentations on family health, family nursing, family therapy, oncology, palliative care and spirituality and health.
In addition, she counsels individuals, couples and families who are dealing with life-threatening illnesses, stress, depression, communication problems, relationship issues and alcohol or drug abuse.
Bell is an international family health leader – particularly in family systems nursing theory, practice and research. She is author or co-author of four books and many professional journal articles.
She has been a University of Calgary nursing faculty member since the 1970s, and from 2002-2007 directed the university’s Family Nursing Unit.
She has taught the Illness Beliefs Model to thousands of health care professionals, graduate students and scholars in Canada, the United States, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Brazil, Portugal and Poland.
Her current research centers on increasing health care professionals’ confidence and competence in collaborating with families experiencing serious illness.
“My life’s work is focused on increasing the capacity of nurses and other health care professionals to care for families who are experiencing serious illness and distress,” Bell says on her Web site.
Bell has started her Taylor Nursing Institute conversation about family nursing practice on Twitter at http://twitter.com/janicembell. More information about Bell is at http://www.janicembell.com/.
Minnesota State Mankato, a comprehensive, doctoral university with 14,950 students and two satellite sites, is part of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, which comprises 32 institutions across the state.
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