MSU doctoral candidate Kelly Adams had to look no further than her hometown to find an idea for her dissertation.
Adams, a doctoral candidate in the College of Nursing, has developed a study to determine how psychological factors and emotion regulation impact patient outcomes in African American women with heart failure.
“I grew up in Muskegon, which has a high percentage of African Americans, so I had seen that the African American population seemed to really struggle,” Adams said.
According to Index Mundi, a data portal that gathers facts and statistics from multiple sources, Muskegon, Mich., has the fifth highest African American population by county in Michigan.
Adams recognized that there was an economic disparity in the Muskegon community between African Americans and Caucasians, but was not sold on that being the only reason for the struggle and wanted to learn more about it.
“I’ve found that through life experience, you just wonder about things. When you put all of these wonderings together, all of a sudden you think, ‘maybe that would make sense,’” Adams said.
Adams started her nursing career in 2002 as a charge nurse in acute care neurology at Spectrum Health but once cardiovascular patients were incorporated with the rest of the patient population, she became involved in a group to help improve the outcomes of patients with heart failure.
She then took a job as a clinical nurse educator who helped teach and train staff members on current practice guidelines to improve patient outcomes. Since the role was considered a leadership position, she was asked to develop a research project with a clinical nurse specialist. Along with a group of other staff members, she began to lay out a plan for a project.
Her research group chose to look at how emotional intelligence of nurses impacted the health outcomes of patients for whom they care for.
When thinking about her dissertation, she wanted to merge what she knew about heart failure and the ability to manage emotions.
Patients Adams had seen over her career struggled to maintain physical and psychological health in the midst of chronic disease management. With over 5 million people in the U.S. with heart failure and a costly $24 billion per year contributor to direct health care costs, the problem was clear. Patients with heart failure consume exorbitant national resources and suffer physically, psychologically and financially.
“While I was looking at combining heart failure with emotion regulation, I saw in the literature that African American women have much higher rates of depression and anxiety,” Adams said. In relation to heart failure, “they are diagnosed younger, they are suffering worse outcomes and they have emotional problems that are evident. I thought it would be the perfect population to look at if emotion regulation impacted health behaviors.”
Adams is now at the end of her third year as a doctoral candidate with an expected graduation date of Dec. 2015. During her first three years of the program she built her idea and submitted a grant to the National Institutes of Health and included her research proposal. She expects to be notified if she will receive funding or not by the end of May.
She will start conducting her dissertation study by the end of summer.
While conducting her research about African American women with heart failure, she plans to look at how patients adhere to their treatments by asking about diet, medication, exercise and how often these patients seek emergent care. In terms of emotion regulation, Adams also plans to ask patients about emotional behaviors in stressful situations.
Adams is passionate about making the findings meaningful not only to nurses, but to psychologists, physicians and more.
“I want to be able to reach the broadest audience that I can with what I do, and I think the way that Michigan State has supported interdisciplinary work really makes that possible,” Adams said.
After her doctoral program ends, Adams would like to continue her research and teach as well.
“I really want to work at a research intensive university where I can be both faculty and a researcher because I would like to continue my program of research and to learn more about how I can help African American women with heart failure, but I also love teaching,” Adams said.