Carol E. Smith, RN, PhD, FAAN

Professional Background

Carol E. Smith, Ph.D. began her nursing endeavors on the Pacific coast, a Midwesterner having never seen the ocean! She earned an AD from Purdue University and a BSN from the University of Iowa. Then worked a decade in ICUs. After completing her master's from Wayne State University in Detroit. She was an FNP in small-town Blooming Prairie where the practice served all ages, nursing homes, school sports physicals, migrant farmworkers, and emergency farming accidents. During those 5 years, she completed her Ph.D. while enjoying research experiences at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Smith started at the University of Kansas as Associate Professor of Nursing in 1984. In 1987, she became a Tenured SON Professor and Mentor for Faculty Research. In addition to teaching, she has maintained 38 years of NIH funding and has an extensive list of publications.

Research

Overview

Dr. Smith and her research teams have developed, tested, and conducted clinical trials of interventions for complex in-home care and family support. Some of these interventions have been translated into policy and procedure guides across rural Kansas. Many of her empirically verified interventions have been translated into clinical practice through national interdisciplinary professional and clinical associations and by various health care agencies. She has experience with large data sets and reconfigured a North American Oley Foundation patient data registry now used nationally. These data help guide families who provide intricate in-home care. She has effectively translated scientific outcomes to create an infection prevention kit selected by the KS Department of Health andamp; Environment for their campaign in KS schools, public services, and restaurants. This kit has been translated into six languages for medical missions and independently tested at Cleveland Clinic and found effective in reducing hospital costs. Dr. Smith has also published cost efficiencies for professionals delivering mobile chronic illness management homecare.

Dr. Smith has published programs used by social workers worldwide for depression prevention and peer support programs that can be viewed in Mosby’s Home Care Guides, advocacy group newsletters for chronically ill patients and their families, and national interdisciplinary research and clinical journals.

She has served as a mentor or sponsor for NIH research funding involving multidisciplinary faculty investigators, junior, and pre- and post-doctoral students. These have resulted in many grant awards including, but not limited to, her doctoral students NRSAs and other funded fellowships. In addition, the KUMC cardiac medical residents have been assigned to complete their research requirements with her multidisciplinary research teams. She is named a U.S. Army mentor for their PhD’s Tri-Military grants on studies in her area of expertise. National and regional health policies have been partially based on her research data outcomes presentations within various academies, committees, panels, etc. She was an invited member of the Capitol Hill panel, Technology to Support Family Caregiving presented to the 21st Century Healthcare Congressional Caucus. Of international note, Dr. Smith was a featured researcher in the European International Journal of Innovation in Research. Dr. Smith was visiting faculty for research in Australia throughout the 1990s and in Finland across the 2000s resulting in being awarded the Viking Sword for multidisciplinary research.