Gwen Sherwood, RN, PhD, FAAN

Gwen D. Sherwood, PhD, RN, FAAN is Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing. Gwen’s service to the Honor Society for Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International spans chapter, regional, and international activities. Highlights include chapter president, program chair, secretary, and chairing numerous committees and task forces. She worked with many chapters as a Distinguished Lecturer from 1991-2005. She was local arrangements chair for two regional conferences and helped shape regional and chapter celebrations for the Honor Society’s 75th anniversary. She served two terms on the biennial convention program planning committee, participated as a collateral reviewer for abstract selection and the research grants process, and was a mentor in the Omada Board Program.

An Honor Society Global Ambassador, she was an invited participant in the Arista3 meetings. She chaired a global task force to complete the Scholarship of Reflective Practice position paper posted on the Society’s web page. Her hospital research team received the 2001 Regional Research Utilization Award for implementing Relationship Centered Care. She has been a Virginia Henderson Fellow since 1999.

Her work focuses on transforming health care environments by expanding relational capacity of health care providers. Studies examined patient satisfaction with pain management outcomes, the spiritual dimensions of care, and teamwork as a variable in patient safety. Currently she is co-investigator for a second Robert Wood Johnson funded grant on Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) and for an interinstitutional grant to examine effectiveness of teaching modalities for interdisciplinary teamwork training for nursing and medical students. She is past president of the International Association for Human Caring. She chairs a RIG for the International Network of Doctoral Education and serves on the Research Committee of the National Patient Safety Foundation, the Expert Technical Panel for AHRQ’s TeamSTEPPS, and several editorial review boards.