IUPUI

Suzanne Gordon, Internationally Known Award-Winning Journalist, To Keynote Annual Event

INDIANAPOLIS - An internationally recognized journalist will be the keynote speaker at the Seventh Annual Sonna Ehrlich Merk Distinguished Lectureship on Friday, March 2, 2007. A luncheon and lecture, hosted jointly by the IU School of Nursing and Clarian Health, will take place from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the Ballroom of the University Place Conference Center & Hotel on the IUPUI campus. Individual tickets are $25.00 and tables can be purchased for $500.00. (For more information, please contact Mary Pat Poskon at 274-4019 or mpposkon@iupui.edu).

Suzanne Gordon's keynote address will focus on "Changing the Odds for Nursing by Moving from Virtue to Knowledge." A book signing will follow featuring one of Gordon's more recent books: "Nursing Against The Odds: How Health Care Cost Cutting, Media Stereotypes, and Medical Hubris Undermine Nurses and Patient Care" that was published by the Culture and Politics of Health Care Work series, ILR imprint of Cornell University Press in May of 2005. This book has garnered three 2005 Book of the Year Awards from The American Journal of Nursing and a Golden Lamp Award from the Center for Nursing Advocacy. (2005). Guests will have an opportunity to meet Ms. Gordon and purchase autographed copies.

A freelance journalist and author since 1970, Ms. Gordon writes about political culture, women's issues, nursing, and health care. She is the author of six books, co-editor of four others, and co-author, with Bernice Buresh, of From Silence to Voice: What Nurses Know and Must Communicate to the Public, published by the Cornell University Press. From Silence to Voice won a best book of the year award in 2000 from The American Journal of Nursing. Over the past 26 years, Ms. Gordon has written over 300 articles for major national magazines and newspapers. For almost 20 years, she has been observing nurses and other caregivers in hospitals and health care institutions across the country and writing about care giving and health care reform issues. While writing her best-selling book Life Support: Three Nurses on the Front Lines, she followed three nurses at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.

"I am so very pleased to have Suzanne Gordon serve as the keynote speaker for this year's Merk Lectureship," said Marion E. Broome, PhD, RN, FAAN, university dean of the IU School of Nursing and distinguished professor. "Ms. Gordon is a leading health care journalist who continues to raise issues in a thought-provoking fashion about the current state of our health care system, particularly related to the working relationship between nurses and doctors that directly impacts the delivery of health care services to patients. In addition, she writes about the "invisibility" of nurses to the general public, and of how the media portray nurses in spite of the increasingly important role that nurses play in the ever-changing health care environment. At the same time, Suzanne also focuses on what nurses can do themselves to increase the "visibility" of the profession, improve the nursing image and enhance the understanding of their roles in the delivery of services to health care consumers."

Ms. Gordon was a health care commentator for Public Radio's Marketplace. She is an Assistant Adjunct Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing and a Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. In addition, she is an editorial board member of The American Journal of Nursing, Nursing Inquiry, and Clinical Excellence for Nurse Practitioners. She served as a member of the National Advisory Committee on the Nursing Shortage for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Suzanne Gordon holds a BA degree from Cornell University and did graduate work at the Johns Hopkins University.

The Sonna Ehrlich Merk Distinguished Lectureship was established in 2001 in honor of Sonna Ehrlich Merk, DNS, RN, who throughout her career created successful partnerships between clinical sites and academia. In 1997, she became the first senior vice president for nursing and patient care serves and chief nurse executive for Clarian Health, retiring in 2000 after a 30-year professional career in nursing. Since her retirement, Dr. Merk has branched out as an entrepreneur and consults with clients on projects related to nursing administration and operating room nursing.

To learn more about the IU School of Nursing, visit http://nursing.iupui.edu/.