Research Track

The Research track is designed to further expose current MSN students to nursing research and foster an interest in future doctoral study.

The track includes a seminar in which students learn how to review the literature and develop a preliminary proposal that can be used in their application to a PhD program. All students in this track enroll in two approved graduate-level Research Seminar courses, which include a research practicum (NURS 6150 and NURS 6160).

The research practicum allows students the opportunity to work on faculty research to gain research skills. The research practicum is an equivalent of 3 hours per week participating in a faculty member’s ongoing research (45 hours/semester). The faculty member will assist the student in preparing goals and objectives for the experience and meet with the student at a minimum of every two weeks for research mentoring and supervision.

Research activities may vary and include recruitment, preparation of study materials, data collection, data entry and analysis, preparation of applications for IRB approval, attendance at team  meetings, and research-related poster/manuscript preparation.  Practicum hours are flexible and can be completed during the summer.  The track is open to M.S.N. students in their final year of study.

About: After receiving her bachelor’s in physics from Fairfield University, Dr. Ordway earned her certificate in nursing and MSN from Yale School of Nursing. Dr. Ordway worked as a pediatric nurse practitioner and lactation consultant at an urban practice for many years before returning to Yale to obtain her PhD. Her dissertation research examined the effects of the Minding the Baby® home visiting intervention on child behaviors 1-3 years after families completed the research program. She subsequently completed a postdoctoral fellowship under joint mentorship from YSN and the Yale School of Medicine (Psychiatry) from 2011-2013. Her postdoctoral fellowship involved working on adapting the Mothering from the Inside Out (MIO) intervention for implementation into a community mental health clinic.

Currently, Dr. Ordway is an Associate Professor at the Yale School of Nursing with a joint appointment at the Yale Pediatric Sleep Clinic as a pediatric nurse practitioner. Her program of research aims to examine the biosocial relationships that underlie the association between adverse early childhood experiences and toxic stress with a specific focus on the role of the multidimensional constructs of sleep health in early childhood in buffering toxic stress in early childhood. Dr. Ordway’s expertise includes various biomarker and objective sleep measurements in early childhood as well as community-based participatory research approaches that aim to improve the health of marginalized communities and reduce health inequities. She is conducting a randomized clinical trial to test the feasibility and acceptability of a personalized, multilevel sleep health promotion intervention that she developed called Sleep Well, Bee Well for Early Head Start programs (NIH/NINR: 1R34 NR019283-01A1). Dr. Ordway completed a K23 training grant (5K23NR016277) from the National Institute of Nursing Research focused on understanding the relationships among sleep, stress, and health. She hypothesizes that sleep health may be a buffer to toxic stress in early childhood. This hypothesis is informed by her prior years of clinical experience as a primary care PNP and current practice as a PNP specialist at the Yale Pediatric Sleep Clinic that have given her a unique lens through which to develop her research questions.

Questions or for more information, please contact:  

monica.ordway@yale.edu

phone: 203-737-5354

fax: 203-737-4480