[VIRTUAL] Fall 2020 GRASP Seminar: Pamela Z. Cacchione, Penn Nursing, “Interprofessional Research: What a Nurse Scientist Can Bring to the Grasp Lab”

Dr. Cacchione is the Ralston House Term Chair in Gerontological Nursing and an Associate Professor of Geropsychiatric Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Nursing (Penn Nursing). She completed a Penn Nursing Center for Health Care Innovation Fellowship where she focused on two projects: harm reduction in persons with Opioid use disorder with the newly created Center for Opioid Recovery and Engagement and THRIVE a comprehensive discharge process for persons with Medicaid or Dually eligible to address social determinants of health. Prior to this she completed an Atlantic Philanthropies and The John A. Hartford Foundation, Health and Aging Policy Fellowship where she worked with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on the implementation of the PACE Innovation Act (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly), and with Community Catalyst on the roll out of Pennsylvania’s Community HealthChoices, a managed care long term services and supports program.
An expert in Aging including Sensory, Cognitive and Physical Function she has engaged in interprofessional research with Drs. Yim, Pikul and Johnson in social robotics and soft robotics. Dr. Cacchione is always identifying potential inventions and innovations to improve lives of older adults. She is currently funded to develop and test a prototype of Heart Failure Sensing Socks. She has access to groups of community dwelling in hospitalized older adults interested in participating in research.
For the last three years her clinical practice has been as a Nurse Scientist at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. She is currently working on several projects: Multimodal intervention to decrease violence and aggression in the ED; a Debriefing Project; a Sepsis Escape Room and a PARO Robot Study on the Acute Care for the Elderly Unit.
Dr. Cacchione is the Editor of Clinical Nursing Research, An International Journal. She also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Gerontological Nursing and Research in Gerontological Nursing.
Dr. Cacchione received her BSN from Villanova University College of Nursing, MSN as a Gerontological Nurse Practitioner from Marymount University School of Nursing, and her PhD from Saint Louis University School of Nursing. She completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at The University of Iowa College of Nursing, focused on delirium in sensory impaired rural older adults in long-term care. She completed a National Institute of Nursing Research funded study titled ‘Nursing intervention for sensory impaired LTC Elders.”