SINGAPORE - A faculty member from the National University of Singapore's Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies (NUS Nursing) has been named a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing (AAN), one of the highest honours in the nursing profession globally.
Associate Professor Wang Wenru is the only one from Singapore to receive the fellowship this year. A total of 230 nursing leaders worldwide were selected by the AAN.
Based in Washington DC, the AAN currently has more than 2,700 fellows who are the nursing field's most accomplished leaders in education, management, practice and research.
The fellows are selected based on their abilities in improving nursing practices and health policies, and in making future contributions.
Prof Wang will be inducted into the AAN during its annual meeting and conference next month.
The 52-year-old Chinese national has been a faculty member at NUS Nursing since 2012.
She has over 28 years of experience as a nurse, educator and researcher. Her research is focused on chronic diseases, with an emphasis on heart disease.
Prof Wang is currently studying a new model of care where cardiac rehabilitation is carried out in patients' homes through mobile devices and wireless sensors. This new model will build on a four-week home rehabilitation programme she helped design in 2015, where cardiac patients refer to a manual and a DVD while doing rehab. This programme, which has been updated over the years, is being used in the National University Hospital.
She is also working with a research team from the United States, Thailand and Cambodia to translate and validate her care interventions in those countries.
She has also ventured into diabetes research, and helped to develop a self-management system in smartphones for diabetic patients with poor control of their blood sugar levels.
As convenor of the Chronic Illness and Long-term Care Research programme at NUS Nursing, Prof Wang mentors junior faculty members and supervises PhD students.
"I think of (the fellowship) more as leveraging on the recognition to further drive, establish and expand my collaboration with multidisciplinary teams of researchers to develop evidence-based, patient-centric and innovative interventions to address the complex public healthcare needs in Singapore," said Prof Wang.
NUS Nursing's head, Professor Emily Ang, said Prof Wang has made an impact by supporting healthcare organisations create home-based and patient-centric models of care.
"(The home-based) alternative is now increasingly valuable and relevant as the coronavirus pandemic leads to widespread disruption and discontinuation of cardiac rehabilitation programmes and other social opportunities for cardiovascular disease patients," she added.
