M. Rebecca O'Connor
Associate Professor
Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing
Profile
Dr. Rebecca O'Connor is an Associate Professor in the University of Washington School of Nursing, an inaugural Betty Irene Moore Nurse Leaders and Innovators Fellow, and Affiliate Member of the Center for Pediatric Nursing Research at Seattle Children's Hospital. Her research, teaching, and service reflect her commitment to addressing bias and furthering equity, diversity, and belonging addressing bias in nursing and beyond. Dr. O'Connor recognizes that multiple historical and structural barriers in the US prevent many marginalized populations from achieving health equity and dissuades their participation in clinical research, further exacerbating inequities. To address the former, her research seeks to reduce disparities by interrupting factors like implicit bias that negatively affect health care providers’ decision-making. Her current project, IBIASTM, funded by the Betty Irene Moore Fellowship seeks to transform clinical nursing education by making implicit bias a central focus in all patient encounters throughout the undergraduate nursing program. Dr. O'Connor also provides implicit bias training for undergraduate nursing students, interdisciplinary health sciences graduate students, Seattle Children's Research Institute teams, and the National T3 Interprofessional Team Development Training for Health Sciences Faculty. To address a lack of diversity among clinical research participants, she works with Seattle Children’s and the Institute of Translational Health Sciences as they partner with communities to ensure that future research benefits us all. Through an Innovative Educator Fellowship, Dr. O'Connor collaboratively developed and leads an annual 3-day Antiracism and DEI Teaching Institute for School of Nursing faculty that resulted in statistically significant increases in DEI-related teaching self-efficacy among attendees. Dr. O'Connor received the School of Nursing’s student-nominated Excellence in Promoting Diversity Through Teaching in 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2021 and the Sandra Eyres Excellence in Graduate Teaching in 2022.
Journal Articles
- 2023. "Research recruitment through the patient portal: perspectives of community focus groups in Seattle and Atlanta." JAMIA open 6. ooad004.
- 2023. "School Nurses' Diabetes-Related Attitudes and Self-efficacy in Diabetes Education and Management." The Journal of school nursing : the official publication of the National Association of School Nurses 39. 487-495.
- "Using equityXdesign to Develop Nursing Curricula : The Implicit Bias Clinical Teaching Program Case Study." Nurse educator 49. 57-59.
Classes
- NSG 552: Social Drivers of Health and Health Equity
- NURS 587: Leadership and Team Science Seminar
- NURS 610: Teaching Practicum
Grants
- CFPHN SCRI Staff Assignment 2023-2024, Seattle Children's Hospital
- Recordable Cards for Optimizing Outcomes and Reducing Disparities after ED Discharge: The RECORD-ED Pilot Study, Seattle Children's Hospital
- Implicit Bias Teaching Protocol, The Regents of the University of California