Teresa T. Goodell is an award-winning trauma nurse and educator. She has more than 35 years of experience in nursing. She is board certified in wound care and trauma care and as an adult clinical nurse specialist. Goodell is passionate about advocating for patients and improving patient care.
Organizations have awarded her more than $400,000 in research and educational grants. Peer-reviewed journals have published her articles. She has also been on peer review panels for a number of journals.
Goodell decided to pursue nursing because she could make a difference in people’s lives.
“I could see that what I would be doing would contribute to society,” Goodell said. “I didn’t like the idea of making money for some corporation. I was really energized by the idea that I can use science and help people at the same time.”
Goodell got her first nursing license in 1982 and took a job at St. Joseph Hospital in Ohio. She worked in the coronary care unit. After three years, she moved to Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Cleveland, where she worked as an ICU nurse.
While working toward her master’s degree, she did research for the hospital. She earned her Master of Science degree as an Adult Clinical Nurse Specialist in 1993.
The quality of patient care Goodell observed as a nurse troubled her. She saw doctors pursue aggressive treatment with little regard for individual choice or quality of life.
“It made me want to fight harder to change things,” Goodell said. “I was being asked to do things that I didn’t fundamentally agree with and were not in the patient’s best interest.”
This drove her to look for other roles in health care where she could help patients.
She moved to Portland, Oregon. There, she took a job at Oregon Health & Science University as a trauma clinical nurse specialist and coordinator. She graduated with her PhD in 2004. In a subsequent post-doctoral fellowship, she studied complications of hospitalization in older adults and developed gerontological nursing education strategies.
She taught for eight years at Oregon Health & Science University but found the politics of academia didn’t suit her. So, she took a job as faculty with Visionem, Inc. This allowed her to teach practicing trauma nurses all over the country.
Now, she teaches nurses about trauma care, evidence-based nursing practice and humanizing the hospital environment.
Goodell believes that pharmaceuticals and surgery shouldn’t be the only options for patients. As a nurse, she endorses holistic care. She is passionate that nutrition, exercise and judicious use of drugs and surgery can work together to offer the best treatment plan.
As a feminist, she also cares about gender bias in health care. She believes that everyone should have equal quality of care regardless of gender, race and other factors. She also believes that science should be more inclusive to provide the best data on safety and effectiveness of treatments.
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