Catherine Cole,
DNSc, APRN, BC, Assistant Professor

Since receiving a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Pittsburg State University in 1979, I have cared for older adults, many of whom had dementia. My clinical experience, coupled with a desire to improve patient outcomes, led me to pursue a master’s degree in nursing at the University of Kansas. As a Clinical Nurse Specialist, I have served as a clinical expert, patient educator, and team leader for interdisciplinary quality improvement teams. I came to appreciate the power of aggregate data for improving patient outcomes. After 15 years of clinical practice, I formulated a new career goal, to become a clinical researcher, and in 1996 entered a doctoral program at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Later, as a John A. Hartford Post-doctoral Fellow from 2003 – 2005, my research focused on Sleep and Alzheimer’s disease.

Advances have been made in understanding the cause and developing a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. However, a future cure does not improve care for the approximately 5 million who are now afflicted in the United States or the burden of care giving for them. Florence Nightingale said in Notes on Nursing that sleep was all-important, and science now supports Nightingale’s contention. Yet, in the standards of care for persons with Alzheimer’s disease, sleep often is not mentioned. The Practice Parameter: Management of Dementia published by the American Academy of Neurology in 2004 noted that no Class I evidence was found for the pharmacologic treatment of sleep disturbances in dementia and research is needed for non-pharmacologic treatments. The effect of sleep fragmentation in persons with Alzheimer’s disease is an under-explored area of investigation with the potential for improving patient outcomes.

I have received funding from the National Institute of Nursing Research part of the National Institute of Health to explore the effect of sleep fragmentation in persons with Alzheimer’s disease.