12th Annual Penn Medicine Nursing Research and Evidence-based Practice Conference

Sean Clarke, PhD, RN, FAAN, is a health policy and outcomes research who currently holds the Ursula Springer Professorship in Nursing Leadership at New York University’s Rory Meyers College of Nursing. His research and writing focuses on quality and safety issues in acute care hospitals, workforce issues, occupational safety of nurses, and the influences of economic and political factors on healthcare delivery and the nursing profession.

He is perhaps best known for research on nurse staffing in hospitals and surveys of nurse working conditions and has authored or co-authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles and 30 book chapters. In addition to teaching nursing, nursing-related health sciences, health policy, and research at the baccalaureate through doctoral levels, he also supervises PhD and postdoctoral research trainees and maintains a program of research with colleagues from a number of countries. He is currently co-principal investigator of “Towards Magnet 3.0,” a multimethod evaluation of the current Magnet program model, supported by the American Nurses Credentialing Center and is Editor-in-Chief of Nursing Outlook, the official journal of the American Academy of Nursing and a leading international venue for current research and thought on leadership, policy and professional issues in nursing.

He has been a consultant to clinicians, leaders, and professional associations on issues related to nursing and patient safety and has been extensively involved in journal editing and peer review of research projects for two decades in Canada, the United States, and internationally. Clarke completed his basic clinical and research training in nursing at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada, and pursued a nurse practitioner education and a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Bettencourt is an Assistant Professor and vice chair in the Department of Family and Community Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. She is also the Director of Acute Care Implementation Research and a Senior Fellow at the Penn Implementation Science Center (PISCE@LDI), and a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute.

Dr. Bettencourt works at the intersection of implementation science and health services research, bringing a wealth of practical experience as a Clinical Nurse Specialist that informs her research agenda in closing the evidence-to-practice gap with implementation research methods. Dr. Bettencourt is an alum of the National Clinician Scholars Program and received extensive training in implementation science funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the University of Michigan. Dr. Bettencourt received her BSN from UNC Chapel hill, a master’s in nursing from Johns Hopkins University, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a Past President of the American Association of Critical Care Nurses (AACN), the largest specialty nursing organization in the world.

Dr. Bettencourt is an accomplished speaker and has presented at the AACN National Training Institute, the American College of Chest Physicians, the American Burn Association, the World Federation of Pediatric Critical Care Societies, the Society of Critical Care Medicine, the Association of Healthcare Journalism Conference, and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine.

Maria Yefimova is the lead nurse scientist with the Center for Nursing Excellence and Innovation at UCSF Health and an Assistant Adjunct Professor with the Department of Physiological Nursing at UCSF School of Nursing. She supports clinical and advanced practice nurses within the health system to engage in research, scholarship, and evidence-based practice implementation. Her research is grounded in her clinical interest to improve care for frail older patients through systematic change in care delivery. Dr. Yefimova obtained her BSN, MSN and PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and a graduate certificate in gerontology from the University of Southern California. Her postdoctoral fellowship training followed in the inaugural cohort of nurses in the National Clinician Scholars Program at UCLA/VA Greater Los Angeles. She was the 2018-2019 Academy Health Delivery Science Fellow, gaining skills in implementation science and learning health systems at VA Palo Alto. Currently, Dr. Yefimova is a co-investigator on multiple NIH-funded projects in dementia caregiving and elder mistreatment.