Senior Faculty

Peggy R. McConnell, MN, APRN-BC
vita (.pdf file)

Professional Experience in End of Life Care

Most of my experience has been in helping older adults with advanced directives. Attended End-of –Life Nursing Consortium (NLNEC) Curriculum sponsored by Robert Wood Johnson and American Association of Colleges of Nursing in Pasadena, CA in January, 2003.

Teaching Experience

I have concentrated on care of the elderly since 1990 as far as my continuing education and clinical experiences. This is also where my teaching efforts have been directed. I teach both in the undergraduate and graduate level courses that specifically relate to older adult care. I find care of older adults and geriatrics to be a very challenging field. I have participated in course development for the GNP curriculum and have taught both the Care of Older Adults in Structured Settings and Primary Care of Older Adults. In January, I was selected to attend the End of Life Nursing Education Consortium Training Program presented by the City of Hope and AACN funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Clinical Experience

My clinical experience includes acute care, primary care and long term care. My practice area currently is in long term care at a local nursing home. My goal in practice is to help improve the quality of life particularly for our frail elders.

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Deborah K. Poole, APRN-BC, PhD
FNP/GNP
Assistant Professor
vita (.pdf file)

Clinical Experience

I graduated from Chapel Hill’s FNP program in 1980, and spent the first 9 years of my practice as a “generalist” in many different kinds of practice sites. Then, in 1989, I accepted a position as NP in a continuing care retirement community; that experience made me know that gerontological care was for me. I have also practiced in a teaching nursing home and currently see adults of all ages in the ETSU Family Practice office in Kingsport that is one of the residency training centers. But my favorite position of all was as NP with the South Carolina replication site of the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE). This model represents a fabulous means by which to provide quality, effective, interdisciplinary, comprehensive long-term care in a community setting.

Teaching Experience

At ETSU, I have the opportunity to teach geriatrics and gerontology to several different types of learners. Primarily, I teach the older adult courses (primary care, frail elder, geropharmacology) in the Nurse Practitioner options. I also help design and teach the geriatrics curriculum for the Family Practice and Osteopathy residents who are at ETSU’s residency training program in Kingsport. ETSU offers a Graduate Certificate in Gerontology that I enjoy participating in because the students and my faculty colleagues come from many different colleges and departments across campus. This Fall (2003), I will teach an outcomes measurement course for our doctoral students in the College of Nursing. Rest assured that outcomes of care for older adults will be covered thoroughly!

Research Interests

I completed a PhD at the Medical College of Georgia, which has a College of Nursing famous for its faculty expertise in qualitative methodologies. I enjoy research from both the quantitative and qualitative paradigms, and have considerable experience in grounded theory work. For the past several years, exploring how informal caregivers of frail older adults interface with the formal care system has been the center of my research efforts.