There is a paucity of research on chronic illness among post-secondary students despite increasing numbers of individuals pursuing a college education with chronic illness and medical conditions (Herts et al., 2014; Johnston et al., 2021; Pinquart, 2024). Migraine, an often painful neurological condition (Suzuki et al., 2022), is associated with…

For some athletes, dealing with pain is an everyday problem and can have a lasting impact long after their athletic careers. Athletes will use prescribed opioids and others will use alcohol or more illicit drugs such as cocaine or heroin for pain management. These drugs can be highly addictive and can lead to long term social, physical, emotional,…

Too often, the racial diversity conversation is perceived as an issue for people of color rather than one that also profoundly impacts White people. The power of whiteness often reflects its invisibility, particularly embedded into the culture of Christian colleges. This study was a hermeneutic phenomenology of diversity professionals addressing…

Americans diagnosed with serious illnesses tend to have significantly poorer quality of life due to limited access to reliable palliative and end-of-life care. Individuals living with these conditions continue to experience health care that does not meet their needs, experience undue suffering, require increased care visits, and have limited or…

Communication in palliative care is an essential skill that nurses require to advocate for their patients. ELNEC, a national education initiative to improve palliative care, released a curriculum on communication to address deficiencies in the content. This study evaluated the effectiveness of teaching Domain 1: Structure and Processes of Care of…

This dissertation is an autoethnographic poetic illness narrative based on the author's year-long ordeal with unrelenting undertreated chronic pain. The project is grounded in the epistemological tradition of Black Feminist Thought and presented in alignment with the emergent methodological paradigm of critical arts-based inquiry. The purpose of…

Current research on special education teacher burnout focused on the external contextual experiences leading to burnout rather than the innermost dimensions of the cognitive processes by which special education teachers experience burnout. Therefore, the purpose of this transcendental phenomenological research study was to explore how K-12 special…

This dissertation addresses several contemporary health challenges affecting the US population, drawing on methods and perspectives from health services research, social demography, and medical sociology. Paper 1 examines the pathways from educational attainment to difficulty with activities of daily living (ADLs) and instrumental activities of…

There is an identified problem with patients receiving suboptimal pain management at a hospice agency in the northwestern United States. At this agency, undertreatment of pain is prevalent. Evidence indicates that this may be a result of a lack of guidelines, education, and knowledge of appropriate prescribing. Known barriers to the correct…

Despite scientific advances in pain management, inadequate pain relief in hospitalized patients continues to be an on-going phenomenon. Although nurses do not prescribe medication for pain, the decision to administer pharmacological or other interventions for pain relief is part of nursing practice. Nurses play a critical role in the relief of…