Dear Friends,


Each January as we ring in a new year, many people make New Year's Resolutions - goals to reach that will make a difference for us personally or for the greater good. Here at HIGN, our resolutions are always in step with our mission, "To advance age-sensitive and equitable healthcare for all older adults." One of the ways we further this mission is by educating students and the workforce on how to provide age-friendly and dementia-friendly care to older adults. Recent funding will make it possible for us to not just offer education but also provide experiences and programs to enhance the recruitment and retention of nurses to the care of older adults with a focus on long-term care and community-based services. Through the J. Paul Trust Scholarship Fund we will provide support for two students who successfully apply to be HIGN scholars and are committed to working in long-term care. Through funding from the Mother Cabrini Foundation we will implement a nurse fellowship program for 30 nurses new to long-term care with the goal of ensuring a comfort and satisfaction level with their work in this area and ultimately increasing retention of the workforce in long-term care communities where these nurses are working.  



Our January guest column highlights two of our HIGN scholars who recently graduated and are committed to caring for older adults. I think you will find their insights interesting.  


All of us at HIGN wish you a New Year filled with peace and goodwill.


Warm regards,

Tara A. Cortes, PhD, RN, FAAN

Our HIGN Scholars Speak Out



Emma King, BSN, and Shannon Penney, BSN, recent graduates of NYU Meyers and former HIGN Scholars, discuss their journey of becoming nurses and their interest in caring for the older adults population.


How did you become interested in Geriatric Nursing? 


Emma: Initially, because of my specific interest in end-of-life care, I sought out Geriatric focused groups like HIGN and GSIG (the Geriatric Student Interest Group) for which I acted as president.


Shannon: For me, the decision to work with older adults was surely influenced by my grandparents – all four of whom I was able to have relationships with well into my adulthood. Each were matriarchs and patriarchs in the classical sense, and I am incredibly lucky that they were all kind, caring, loving, and reasonable people. They were the kind of grandparents that made you proud of your family and piqued your interest in ancestry and heritage. As only one of four remain with us today, I have an even greater appreciation for how long they lived healthy, beautiful lives as older people.


How do others view older patients in the healthcare field?


Emma: In the world and in the hospital older adult's lives are invisible, their social-emotional needs are considered an inconvenience and their care is seen as complex, perhaps, but ultimately "boring". We can no longer afford to think this way. There will soon be too many older adults interacting with medical care for this population to be at all invisible, too many who have experienced a mental health crisis for us to ignore their social and emotional needs, too many with medical care more complex than ever seen before, for us to be bored.


Shannon: Often nurses would sigh before going into older adults' rooms because it demanded so much more of their time and energy, but I loved it. They were funny, and smart, and so eager to tell you about their condition - as a new nurse this was such amazing practical knowledge. I would come out of the room with information about them that seemed relevant to their patient profile but that the team didn’t know about, or wouldn’t be noted in their charts. 


What is your advice to those who will be serving the older adults population? 


Emma: My advice to you as future nurses is to allow yourself to honestly witness the state of end-of-life care and dying. Are people's needs being met? Is this care actually boring? As an HIGN scholar in the Complex Care of the Older Adult seminar class I focused on the caregiver dyad, showing how older patients and their unpaid family caregivers move through the care system as an interconnected unit whose health is "bidirectional," what affects one affects the other. We have to move away from seeing patients as individuals in a vacuum, their health and their loved ones' health depends on it. Advocating for older patients and their caregiver may be considered unexciting by the medical culture but being a change-maker will never be boring! 


Shannon: I’m not sure I have any resounding advice on working with older patients, but I do think perspective helps a great deal. As frustrating as it can be when your patient can’t hear you, can’t get comfortable, can’t remember their medications, etc. – I always try to remember how special this population actually is. And more importantly, how much of a privilege old age is. How privileged our families have been to have our grandparents with us for so long. As nurses, we need to celebrate aging and benefit from the rich experiences older adults bring to us. Aging is a gift to be shared.


Our scholars acknowledge the challenges associated with providing care to older adults but also highlight the rewards of working with this population. It is essential that nursing schools provide the geriatric education and experience needed to improve the care of older adults.

Help Support Geriatric Scholars


Contributions to the J. Paul Trust HIGN Scholarship will help us to support more nurses furthering their practice caring for older adults.

Donate Now!

NYU Meyers Receives Award To Develop Designation of Excellence in Person-Centered Long-Term Care

HIGN received an 18-month, $375,000 award from The Mayer-Rothschild Foundation to enhance person-centered care in long-term care settings through the development of a designation of excellence. 


The Mayer-Rothschild Foundation Designation of Excellence in Person-Centered Long-Term Care initiative will develop the processes, tools, and standards to guide and evaluate nursing homes, assisted living communities, and dementia and memory care residences in their journey for the designation of excellence in person-centered care


Click here to read the full press release.

Adult Day Services Offer More Than 'Dancing and Dominoes'


Prof. Tina Sadarangani wrote a column for McKnight's Long-Term Care News on the benefits of adult day services on the well-being of participants and caregivers and the need for policymakers to acknowledge the comprehensive services provided by adult day services and provide equitable reimbursement and funding.


Click here to read the full column.

Tackling Social Isolation Among Older Adults Amid Recurring COVID-19 Outbreaks


Research Scientist Xiang Qi penned an article for McKnight's Long-Term Care News on Tackling Social Isolation Among Older Adults Amid Recurring COVID-19 Outbreaks which highlights 1) The risk of isolation at home among older adults and 2) Benefits of technology-based interventions.


Click here to read more.

Behavioral Health in Long-Term Care

Free Courses and Case Studies



PROMO CODE: BH2023

The Behavioral Health in Long-Term Care series educates Assisted Living, Skilled Nursing Home and Memory Care Unit staff on behavioral health disorder identification and recovery support services. Courses include Depressive Disorders, Substance Use Disorders, Trauma-Related Disorders, Bipolar Disorder, Serious Mental Illness and Anxiety Disorders.


Courses are available for:

Primary Care Providers

RNs, LPN, Interprofessionals

Certified Nursing Assistants and Direct Caregivers


Courses are free until the end of January!


Nursing Continuing Professional Development Credits are available.


The NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing Center for Nursing Continuing Professional Development is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development by the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Commission on Accreditation (Provider # P0367). 

HIGN Highlights


Prof. Fidel Lim was featured in the National League for Nursing’s podcast Unscripted Conversation Scholarship. He provided commentary on the impact of chatbots in nursing education based on the editorial he wrote for the Nursing Education Perspectives journal.


Prof. Fidel Lim was featured in the Minority Nurse publication in their Champion of Nursing Diversity.


Prof. Komal Patel Murali was recently awarded a pilot grant from the Rutgers-NYU P50 Center for Asian Health Promotion and Equity entitled “Domains of Caregiving Support Accessed by South Asians in Faith Based Settings.”


Prof. Komal Patel Mural presented her NIA IMPACT Collaboratory funded project at the National Palliative Care Research Center Kathleen Foley Retreat "Designing a Health Equity-Focused Hospice Care Transitions Intervention in Home Healthcare for People Living with Dementia.


Prof. Jasmine Travers published an op-ed in U.S. News & World Report entitled Proposed Federal Nursing Home Staffing Standards Will Be Too Little, Too Late.



Publications and Presentations:



Prof. Tara Cortes, Taylor McMahon, Amy Stewart and Marianne Shaughnessy co-authored a chapter entitled Staff Development and Training in the book Practice & Leadership in Nursing Homes.



Prof. Dan David, Prof. Ab Brody and NYU Meyers PhD student Laura Moreines presented a symposium at the Gerontological Society of America in collaboration with researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine "The Eye of the Storm: End-of-Life Care in New York City During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons for the Future of Hospice."


Researcher Aditi Durga presented on behalf of the Aliviado Team a Paper at the Gerontological Society of America "Co-Designing a Culturally Informed Dementia Symptom Self-Management mHealth App with Care Partners."


Prof. Fidel Lim published an article in the ANA's American Nurse Journal titled Urinary Tract Infection Revisited: Optimizing best practices.


Prof. Tina Sadarangani won the Judge's Choice Award for best project at the 2023 NIA Startup Challenge for her work on Caremobi, a Mobile app to facilitate communication among family members, loved ones, and health care providers of adults in care facilities.


Prof. Dena Shulman-Green was selected to be a fellow of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.


Prof. Dorothy Wholihan presented a two day conference: "Palliative Care in the Nursing Home" for nursing staff at the JJ Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx.


Prof. Bei Wu received the Maxwell Pollack Award for Productive Aging from the Gerontological Society of America.

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