Dr. Mary Jo Grap Receives AACN Research Abstract Award and Patent for New Device
Mary Jo Grap, Ph.D., R.N., ACNP, FAAN, Nursing Alumni Endowed Professor at the School of Nursing, has been selected to receive a 2012 American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) Research Abstract Award for her poster abstract “Sedation as a mediator of the stress response during mechanical ventilation.” Dr. Grap will present her findings in May at the National Teaching Institute 2012 in Orlando, FL. Co-authors of the abstract are former VCU Nursing professor Cindy Munro, Ph.D., R.N., ANP-BC, FAAN, associate dean for Research and Innovation and professor at the University of South Florida College of Nursing (University of South Florida), and Dr. Jessica Ketchum, an assistant professor in the Department of Biostatistics at VCU. NTI is the National Critical Care Conference sponsored by AACN. Dr. Grap’s abstract was part of the VCU School of Nursing’s NIH-funded SAVE study, “Sedation Effects in Mechanically Ventilated Patients.”
Dr. Grap was also part of a team of VCU inventors who were recently issued a U.S. Patent entitled, “Prevention of Ventilator Associated Pneumonia (VAP)” for a new device intended to reduce pneumonia in mechanically ventilated, critically ill patients. It will be part of an endotracheal tube (breathing tube) that will either absorb oral secretions, preventing them from moving around the tube and into the lungs potentially causing pneumonia, or it will be a device that would contain anti-bacterial properties so that any secretions that may reach the lungs do not contain pneumonia causing bacteria.
Congratulations to Dr. Grap!
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