Alison Colbert

• Duquesne University

Background Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a preventable national public health problem that results in adverse health consequences. Research suggests youth experiencing CSA are often of school age. Screening for early detection of health issues is integral to school nurse (SN) practice. Still, there is little evidence that routine screening when CSA i...

Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a pervasive public health problem. If left undetected, CSA can result in immediate and long-term health problems, which can be mitigated through early identification. Schools are an ideal environment to implement screening measures, and school nurses (SN) are uniquely poised to intervene and respond early. The aim of thi...

Objective This review examines trauma from violence as a risk factor for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among women attending STD clinics. The review also aims to suggest trauma informed care (TIC) integrated into STD clinics might more effectively address traumatic effects of violence linked to sexual risk behaviors among this population. D...

Background: Few schools of nursing have explicit content that focuses on disability as a multidimensional construct. Time and expertise are two barriers to increasing that material. Method: To address this gap, a set of online modules were developed to provide an introduction to the specialized knowledge related to the care of individuals with d...

Objective: The aim of this study was to describe the complex relationships among patient safety culture, nurse demographics, advocacy, and patient outcomes. Background: Why has healthcare lagged behind other industries in improving quality? Little nursing research exists that explores the multifactorial relationships that impact quality. Method...

Background: Human sex trafficking is a major public health issue. The United States is the second largest market for sex-trafficked women, yet few healthcare interventions, designed for women specifically, have been identified. The purpose of this review was to present a systematic review of the literature on the characteristics and healthcare nee...

Background: People with disabilities (PWDs) experience significant health disparities. The complex experience of disability requires that nurses are adequately and deliberately prepared to care for PWDs. However, there are no recognized nursing competencies to direct education and care. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop a set of...

We describe the results and implications of a literature review that identifies the number of normative and empirical articles, respectively, that have appeared in Nursing Ethics in each year from 1994 to 2017. The results of our analysis suggest a powerful trend away from normative scholarship and toward empirical investigation within the field of...

Questioning a provider's order

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to describe two innovative biomedical engineering and nursing collaborations designed to educate a new cadre of professionals and develop new knowledge and innovations (robots, patient care devices, and computer simulation). Organizing construct: Complex health problems demand a highly skilled response tha...

Background: Increased numbers of individuals and families in the United States are living below the poverty level. Beginning nursing students must start to develop an understanding of the constraints of living in poverty and its relationship with health. Objectives: To describe the effects of a poverty simulation implemented in a freshman-level...

The incidence of perinatal opioid use and neonatal withdrawal continues to rise rapidly in the face of the growing opioid addiction epidemic in the United States, with rural areas more severely affected. Despite decades of research and development of practice guidelines, maternal and neonatal outcomes have not improved substantially. This focused e...

Background: An estimated 10 million people are incarcerated internationally, including 2.1 million people in the United States. Criminal justice involvement is a social determinant of individual and family health disparities. Health care in correctional and forensic psychiatric facilities is nurse driven. The unique contributions of nurse authors...

Background: Low health literacy in older adults has been associated with poor health outcomes (i.e., mortality, decreased physical and cognitive functioning, and less preventive care utilization). Many factors associated with low health literacy are also associated with health disparities. Interaction with healthcare providers and sources of healt...

Background Despite the strong literature on the influence of self-care on hypertension (HTN) diagnosis, there is a notable lack of studies that explore self-care among Filipino immigrants in the United States (US) who have HTN. Aim To determine the levels of and relationships between and among acculturation, acculturative stress, HTN self-efficacy...

In response to new demands in the nursing profession, an innovative undergraduate genetics course was designed based on the Essential Nursing Competencies and Curricula Guidelines for Genetics and Genomics. Reflective journaling and storytelling were used as major pedagogies, alongside more traditional approaches. Thematic content analysis of stude...

Following sexual assaults, victims are advised to seek health care services with forensic evidence collected and packaged in sexual assault kits (SAKs). This large (N = 1,874), retrospective study examined rates of SAK submissions by law enforcement to the state crime laboratory for analysis from 2010 to 2013 at four sites in a Western state in the...

Workplace bullying is strongly associated with negative nursing outcomes, such as work dissatisfaction, turnover, and intent to leave; however, results of studies examining associations with specific patient safety outcomes are limited or nonspecific. This integrative review explores and synthesizes the published articles that address the impact of...

Health priorities of women after incarceration remain poorly understood, constraining development of interventions targeted at their health during that time. We explored the experience of health and health care after incarceration in a focused ethnography of 28 women who had been released from prison or jail within the past year and were living in...

The time after incarceration is widely regarded as tenuous and stressful, and for women living with chronic illness, self-management is yet another stressor. Intervening before the individual is overwhelmed is critical to ensuring success. In this article the Women in Transition to Health, a nurse-led intervention based on Lazarus and Folkman's Tra...

Objectives Explore the cultural influences of safe sleep practices by African-American caregivers of children under 2 years old. Explore the role of health care professionals in promoting safe sleep.Design and SampleA focused ethnography was used to understand the contextual cultural meaning and experiences of safe sleep practices of African-Americ...

Ongoing debate about mammography screening for women in their 40s has brought awareness to the opportunities and challenges for achieving optimal breast health in young African American women and in battling health inequities that place them at greater risk for mortality from breast cancer. Despite the screening controversy, a need exists to unders...

Background: Women who have been incarcerated have higher rates of mental and physical health problems than the general public. Physical activity improves both mental and physical health, and daily activity lowers psychological distress. However, women who are incarcerated report low levels of physical activity. There have been no published studies...

Background: For women with chronic illnesses leaving incarceration, access to and engagement with the healthcare system is critical to successful reintegration. Public health nurses are uniquely qualified to intervene with women in transition. Methods: This analysis used baseline data from the WITH intervention study with women (N=72) living in a c...

Background: A growing body of research focuses on health needs of incarcerated women. While critical, this attention has neglected the approximately 80% of women supervised in the community. They share the disparities experienced by incarcerated womenwhich put them at greater health risk than incarcerated men and other community-residing womenwhile...

This study examined the health status of women with a recent history of incarceration and explored if/how women were accessing health care resources at the time immediately following release. This mixed methods study utilized two phases: (1) a quantitative survey; and (2) qualitative interviewing. Thirty-four women (18 years of age and older, relea...

Background: Women recently released from correctional facilities are among the most vulnerable in our society. They are mostly poor and undereducated, with increased risk of morbidity and mortality. They may also be managing a chronic mental or physical health problem which means they face additional demands beyond the criminal justice system. Succ...

colbert a.m., sereika s.m. & erlen j.a. (2012) Functional health literacy, medication-taking self-efficacy and adherence to antiretroviral therapy. Journal of Advanced Nursing69(2), 295–304. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2648.2012.06007.x Aims. To report a study of the relationship between functional health literacy and medication adherence, as mediated by m...

This study assessed South Carolina nurses' perceived knowledge of emergency preparedness to gain a better understanding of their learning needs and to prioritize continuing education and training efforts based on these needs. Boone's programming model concept of planning provided the framework for this study, which used a descriptive correlational...

Background: Women in the correctional system are a population at increased risk for communicable diseases, substance-abuse disorders, and mental health issues. However, little is known about the unique healthcare needs of this population for the period of time immediately following their release from incarceration. Methods: This qualitative study i...

Behavioral intervention effectiveness in randomized controlled trials requires fidelity to the protocol. Fidelity assessment tools tailored to the intervention may strengthen intervention research. The aim of this study was to describe the assessment of fidelity to the structured intervention protocol in an examination of a nurse-delivered telephon...

This secondary analysis used E. Goffman's (1963) model of stigma to examine how social support and health status are related to HIV stigma, after controlling for specific sociodemographic factors, and how these relationships differed between men and women living with HIV. Baseline data from 183 subjects in a behavioral randomized clinical trial wer...

Background Issues: The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that there are more than 150,000 women in prisons or jails, and that number is increasing at a rate faster than males. Further, 25% of those women have either given birth in the year prior to incarceration or are pregnant at the time of arrest. Comprehensive pre- and post-natal education i...

Health literacy has been shown to be related to multiple health outcomes and may be an issue of great importance in the management of a chronic and complicated disease like HIV. Functional health literacy (FHL) may be a factor that affects medication adherence in people living with HIV/AIDS.This study sought to describe FHL in people living with HI...

The purpose of this study was to describe clinicians' evaluation and management of co-existing mental health, substance abuse (MHSA), and chronic pain (CP) conditions in patients with prolonged critical illness. Little is known about the evaluation and management of these conditions in the intensive care unit, and practice guidelines do not address...

This qualitative study examined the medication-taking behaviors and attitudes of participants determined to be 100% adherers to antiretroviral therapy from a NIH-funded study testing a 12-week telephone adherence intervention. Using open-ended questions, interviewers collected data on a sample of 13 informants, whose medication adherence to a rando...

Accurate self-administration of antiretroviral medication therapy for HIV/AIDS is a significant clinical and ethical concern because of its implications for individual morbidity and mortality, the health of the public, and escalating healthcare costs. However, the traditional construction of patient medication adherence is oversimplified, myopic, a...