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Lois K. Evans papers
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Held at: University of Pennsylvania: Barbara Bates Center for the Study of The History of Nursing [Contact Us]Claire Fagin Hall, 418 Curie Boulevard, Floor 2U, Philadelphia, PA, 19104-4217
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the University of Pennsylvania: Barbara Bates Center for the Study of The History of Nursing. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
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Dr. Lois Evans received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from West Virginia University and her Masters of Science in Nursing and PhD degrees from The Catholic University of America. In 1984, she joined the University of Pennsylvania’s faculty where she distinguished herself as an educator, research, administrator and practitioner. As one of the national leaders in elder care research, she along with her colleague Dr. Neville Strumpf, developed ground breaking research into restraint use on the elderly. This research lead to shaping new policy and standards to reduce restrain use in nursing homes and hospitals.
During her tenure at Penn, Dr. Evans provided leadership in improving faculty diversity and faculty mentorship. Drawing on her background involving mental health, long term care and health systems, Dr. Evans influenced the development of Penn’s School of Nursing clinical nursing programs and providing community-based services, including PACE (Program of All-inclusive Care for Elders) and a geriatric hospital. In addition, federal granted funded her idea of integrating psychiatric mental health graduate nursing curriculum and developing the psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner program. She also engaged in national efforts for education and practice in geropsychiatric nursing. In 2005 she was one of the coordinator of a national conference to assure the direction of the geropsychiatric nursing field. Based on this work, along with funding from the John A. Hartford Foundation, she co-directed the Geropsychiatric Nursing Collaborative at the American Academy of Nursing, which focuses on developing curricula to educate nurses to provide mental health services for the elderly.
Lois Evans’ research into nursing facilities and the sundown syndrome led to her award winning investigations with Dr. Neville Strumpf, on reducing restraint use in nursing home. Also related to these influential studies were interest in individualized care, geriatric mental health, behaviors in dementia, and models and outcomes of care for frail elders. Dr. Evans published numerous important articles, chapters, and books, including Restraint-Free Care: Individualized Approaches for Frail Elders and Academic Nursing Practice: Helping to Shape the Future of Health Care, which describes Penn’s experience in implementing a model that combined education, research and practice.
Lois Evans received numerous awards during her dedicated career, including the Claire M. Fagin Distinguished Researcher Lecture & Award, The Baxter Foundation Epistene Award, The John A. Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing Practice Research Award, Lindback Awards for Distinguished Teaching, and inducted into the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame.
Bibliography, From “Lois K. Evans”, Penn Nursing Science, accessed Dec 13, 2012, http://www.nursing.upenn.edu/faculty/profile.asp?pid=150 .
From “Lois K. Evans”, GAPNA (Gerontological Advanced Practice Nurses Association), accessed Dec 12, 2012, http://www.prolibraries.com/gapna/?select=speaker&speakerID=36912.
The Lois K. Evans papers is a collection acquired by the University of Pennsylvania, Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing from 2010-2012. The papers, arranged in nine series, shed light on her prolific professional career.
Series 1 and 2 explores her personal life and career prior to the University of Pennsylvania. Series I contains personal documents such as awards and tenure notes. The second series focuses son her academic work prior to Penn, including talks, presentations, and her work at Georgetown University.
In the third series, Lois Evans’ professional experiences are explored. The materials in this section sheds light during her tenure at the University of Pennsylvania. This includes correspondence, committee minutes, papers and courses. In addition, there are numerous papers related to the development of the Penn Nursing Network, including information about CARE, LIFE, strategic planning, general files and correspondence.
Series 4 focuses on Dr. Evans’ ground breaking research projects. The largest subseries is her work on reducing restraints among the frail elderly in nursing homes and hospitals which changed national policies. The documented correspondence, research files, literature used, publications as well as research notes and data for smaller projects in addition to the 3 larger projects (Reducing Restraints, Maintaining Restraint Reduction and Relationship Between Physical Restraints Removal and Falls and Injuries). This series also brings to light the original study that influenced her later work on restrains, the Sundown Syndrome Study. The fifth series sheds light on her efforts with geropsychiatric nursing programs and educational efforts.
The sixth series is a collection of documents Dr. Evans collected on the history of nursing. This includes the development of Schools of Nursing as well as gerontologic nursing both at Penn and other institutions. The seven series sheds light on her involvement with national associations, including Sigma Theta Tau and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing for the John A. Hartford Foundation. In addition, there are correspondence and program conferences for the Regional and the National Nursing Centers Consortium.
The last two series (8-9) contain various multi-media formats, including slides and audio cassettes of field notes related to Lois Evans’ restraint projects. In addition, there are several pins and other artifacts from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing gathered by Dr. Evans’ during her tenure as well as a pair of wrist restraints from the 1990s.
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- University of Pennsylvania: Barbara Bates Center for the Study of The History of Nursing
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- Finding aid prepared by Jessica Clark
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This collection is open to researchers unless otherwises noted to protect personal identifiable information.
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Copyright restrictions may apply. Please contact the Center with requests for copying and for authorization to publish, quote or reproduce the material.
Collection Inventory
This series consists mainly of awards received by Lois Evans during her career for her influence on nursing and research. In addition, this section also contains her tenure notes while at the Univesity of Pennsylvania.
Materials in this section relate to Lois Evans’ activities prior to her position at the University of Pennsylvania. This includes talks, presentations, and her work at Georgetown University.
This series contains documents during her tenure at the University of Pennsylvania and the School of Nursing. It has multiple subseries, which includes, Penn Mental Health Nursing, Papers, Talks and Presentations, Courses, Committees, and Correspondence. The subseries “Penn Nursing Network”, which is further organized into subgrouping of general files, strategic planning, research projects, CARE, LIFE and other files, is noted by Dr. Evans to contain “email hard copy depicting the early development of the Penn Nursing Network and the academic practices of the School of Nursing.” At the donor’s request these files should be sealed for long term future access.
** Sealed for 25 years (until 2037)
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As requested by the donor, these files will be sealed for long term future access (until 2062)
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“The purpose of the Penn Macy Initiative, funded by the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, is to help schools of nursing in research-intensive environments develop practices in which they will have control over patient care and, therefore, opportunities to introduce advances in nursing research and education. Academic medicine had benefited tremendously from its numerous linkages to health care delivery systems that enable it to conduct research, quickly put new research into practice and educate medical student in environments that incorporate the latest research in clinical care delivery. In nursing too, the triad of education, research and practice must be vitally bound if we are to prepare nurses for clinical practice in the 21st century.” *taken from opening letter in 1st Conference binder
Evans worked on many projects throughout her career. These documents are grouped by topic. The subseries Restraints contains several components including general files of correspondence, grants, smaller research projects, and publications. In addition, Dr. Evan’s collaborative projects of Cross Cultural Restraints, Reducing Restraints, Maintaining Restraint Reduction, and Relationship Between Physical Restraints Removal and Falls and Injuries are also documented here with grants, original data, field notes, and papers. Also see Series 8. Multi-Media for various cassette tapes of field notes. Dr. Evan’s Sundown Syndrome Study, which influenced the later Restraint projects is also documented in this section.
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Materials in this series contain information on Geropsychiatric Nursing projects and education efforts.
This series is a collection of materials collected by Evans on the development of Schools of Nursing as well as Gerontologic Nursing. As she notes “These are files dating from late 1970s though the early [19]90s that depict some of the history of the relationship of the SON with Ralston House and then with Geriatric Medicine in the development of the Ralston Penn Center for Care, Education and Research for Older People, Files include minutes of early planning meetings, letters and memoranda, and so on. In addition, early barriers encountered in the evolution of the geriatric day hospital (later to become the CARE Program) are depicted in the various memos and meeting minutes.”
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This series contain materials related to Dr. Evans' involvement with the Regional and the National Nursing Centers Consortium as well as Sigma Theta Tau and the American Association of Colleges of Nursing for the John A. Hartford Foundation.
There are several media formats contained within this collection. This includes photographs, slides as well as audio and visual tapes. Many of these formats are related to her work on restraint use, including slide presentations and audio cassette tapes of field notes and case reviews. In addition, there are three video tapes by different organizations that depict her and Dr. Neville Strumpf's work on restraint reduction.
Collected in this series are the various artifacts Dr. Evans gathered during her career. This includes University of Pennsylvania memorabilia, pins and a set of c. 1990 wrist restraints.