Susan Beck, PhD, RN
Current Position: Professor
Contact Information
Address:
College of Nursing
10 South 2000 East
Salt Lake City , UT 84112-5880
Phone: (801) 971-5338
Fax: (801) 581-4642
Email: susan.beck@nurs.utah.edu
Background
Susan L. Beck PhD APRN FAAN is a professor at the University of Utah College of Nursing where she teaches in the doctoral program. Dr. Beck has over 25 years of experience as an advanced practice oncology nurse and holds national certification as an AOCN. Dr. Beck's research interests include the management of symptoms in cancer patients and organizational interventions to improve care.
Dr. Beck served as Project Director for the University Hospital’s Program to Improve Patient Care from 1989 through 1995. In 1996, she was a Visiting Professor and Fulbright Scholar at the University of Pretoria in South Africa where she conducted multiple studies related to cancer pain management. She currently is a co-investigator of a multi-site clinical trial of a nursing intervention to mitigate cancer treatment-related fatigue. And PI of a study to develop a tool to measure the quality of nursing care related to pain management.
Dr. Beck served as President of Cancer Pain Relief-Utah, and as a member of the Steering Committee of the Partnership to Improve End-of-Life-Care in Utah. She led the implementation of the first Leadership Development Institute of the Oncology Nursing Society and was appointed to the first national Advisory Council for the Center for Leadership, Research, and Information of the Oncology Nursing Society Foundation.
My program of research is focused in the area of symptom management in individuals with cancer. The goal of my scholarly pursuits is to improve the quality of life for individuals with cancer by improved management of their symptoms. Over time, pursuit of this goal has led me to consider the problem from multiple perspectives. Thus, the scope of the work has included the broad perspectives of health policy and societal influences on cancer symptoms, the influence of organizational characteristics and nursing practice on symptom outcomes, specific interventions to improve symptom management, and methodological studies of how to measure specific symptoms. The symptoms of interest have included pain, fatigue, oral mucositis, and insomnia.
Research
- Management for Prostate Cancer
- Telephone Linked Care: An IT Enabled Integrated System for Cancer Symptom Relief
- 7/02-6/07 Co-Investigator and Faculty: "Oncology Nursing PhD Using Distance Education Technology," NIH, National Cancer Institute (1 R25 CA93831-01A)
- 10/01-4/03 Project Leader: "Experiences of Urban and Rural Elderly Cancer Survivors," (Huntsman Cancer Institute Core Grant Supplement), NIH, National Cancer Institute (3 P30 CA42014-14S1)
- 4/01-3/05 Co-Investigator: "Telephone-Linked Care for Symptom Management" (K. Mooney, PI), NIH, National Cancer Institute
- 9/00-8/01 Co-Investigator: "Telephone-Linked Care: Enhancing Self-Care for Women with Breast Cancer" (K. Mooney, PI), Department of Defense, Breast Cancer Program Concept Award (BC996050)
- 5/00-4/01 Principal Investigator: "An Exploration of Patient Satisfaction with Unrelieved Pain," Oncology Nursing Society Foundation
- 9/99-8/01 Co-Director: "Preparing Nurse Leaders for the 21st Century: Leadership Development for Nursing Faculty and Students," Helene Fuld Trust
- 2/99-1/02 Utah Principal Investigator: "Energy Conservation and Cancer Treatment-Related Fatigue" (subcontract with Fox Chase; Barsevick, PI), National Institute for Nursing Research (RO1 NU04573-01A1)
Publications
- Beck SL, Dudley WN, Barsevick A. (2005). Pain, sleep disturbance, and fatigue in patients with cancer: Using a mediation model to test a symptom cluster. Oncology Nursing Forum, 32(3), 542.
- Beck, S. L. (2004). Mucositis. In C. H. Yarbro, M. M. Frogge, & M. Goodman (Eds.), Cancer Symptom Management (3rd ed., pp. 276-292). Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett.
- Barsevick, A., Dudley, W. N., Beck, S. L., Sweeney, C., Whitmer, K., & Nail, L. (2004). A randomized clinical trial of energy conservation for patients with cancer-related fatigue. Cancer, 100(6), 1302-1310.
- Friese, C. R., Beck, S. L. (2004). Advancing practice and research: Creating evidence-based summaries on measuring nursing-sensitive patient outcomes. Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing 8(6), 675-677.
