Tatiana Sadak PhD, PMHNP, RN

My research is deeply rooted in my geriatric psychiatry clinical practice that serves as a “living laboratory” that brings into focus research issues that are relevant to patients living with dementia (PWD) and their family caregivers (CG). Practice fuels my passion and drives my resolve to use research to make a difference in lives of PWD and their CG and allows me to have perspective of what assessments and interventions can be translated and broadly disseminated into routine clinical practice. My scholarship focuses on informing the design of a new component of health care delivery for PWD and their CG by generating evidence, creating measurement tools and developing interventions aimed to support clinicians and CG working together to prevent avoidable health crises of both CG and PWD and to enable CG to manage the health of their care recipients without sacrificing their own health and wellness. This new approach to healthcare delivery considers PWD/CG to be a unit of care and provides clinicians with tools for iteratively assessing the needs of PWD/CG, for identifying gaps in medical and psychosocial services, and for offering targeted supportive interventions to the dyad.

Education

• BA, Seattle Pacific University, 1997
• BSN, University of Washington, 2006
• MN, University of Washington, 2008
• PhD, University of Washington, 2011

Awards and accolades

• 2017 Cambia Health Foundation. Sojourn’s Leadership Scholar
• 2017 Top doctor, nurse practitioner, physician assistant in psychiatry in 2017. Seattle Met Magazine. Seattle, WA
• 2017 Elected as a Bree Collaborative Dementia Expert Workgroup Member. Collaborative is established by WA state legislature to improve health care quality, outcomes and affordability by creating recommendations that are incorporated into insurer purchasing contracts. Seattle, WA
• 2016 Gerontological Society of America Springer Publishing Company Geriatric/Gerontological Nursing Award for a Distinguished Single research manuscript addressing Geriatric/Gerontological Nursing. New Orleans, LA
• 2016 State of WA Dementia Action Collaborative member. Appointed by the Secretary for the Aging and Long-Term Support Administration. Olympia, WA

What classes do you teach?

Undergraduate Psychiatric Nursing

Guest lecture, present geriatric psychiatry content in psychopharmacology, assessment, neurological basis of psychiatric disability courses

What do you love about the UW School of Nursing?

I love the supportive and nurturing environment that empowers me to be the best teacher, researcher and a clinician that I can be. I am truly inspired by my students, colleagues and community partners.

Department

Biobehavioral Nursing and Health Informatics

Research Areas

• Innovative Interventions
• Symptom Science
• Health Equity
• Lifespan Health

Research Centers

• de Tornyay Center for Healthy Aging