Like many faculty in higher education, Kathleen Morouse, associate professor of nursing in Pennsylvania Western University’s College of Health Sciences and Human Services, works beyond the typical 9 to 5 schedule to advance her knowledge in her academic field of specialty.

She is a member and past president of the national American Nursing Informatics Association, a network of more than 3,000 informatics professionals from all 50 U.S. states who are guided by integrity, committed to delivering high quality, cost-effective health care, dedicated to their professional development, seek to actively engage an inclusive community of innovative informatics professionals and use informatics to advocate for the elimination of health disparities to improve the health of all populations.

Advancing her professional knowledge benefits her students at PennWest.

“My work with ANIA impacts my teaching and educational experiences with students by being able to have the most current information about informatics topics,” Morouse said. “I have personally met or worked on task forces with several of the authors of some of our textbooks.”

As in other fields, diverse viewpoints help informatics professionals better serve a diverse population.

“(Working with ANIA) allows me to bring a more national view of issues across the country, since I have colleagues from all over,” she said. “I am currently on a workgroup that is working on case studies and real patient (not identified) data sets that can be used for assignments in class to apply the concepts.”

Morouse has spoken at national conferences and has coauthored several articles about informatics.