Ruth Kleinpell, PhD, RN, FAAN

Dr. Ruth Kleinpell is currently Assistant Dean for Clinical Scholarship, Independence Foundation Chair in Nursing Education, and Professor at Vanderbilt University School of Nursing in Nashville Tennessee USA. She is certified as an Adult Gerontology Acute Care Nurse Practitioner and has over 30 years of clinical experience in critical care and urgent care settings. She has conducted research
related to patient outcomes in hospitalized older adults and post discharge follow up interventions using telehealth for vulnerable populations including elderly patients, as well as research focusing on outcomes after ICU treatment, and role development of acute care nurse practitioners, among other funded studies. Most recently, she served as PI on a Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) funded 2 year initiative to promote patient centered outcomes research in ICU settings with use of a national collaborative with 63 hospital ICU teams to implement patient and family centered initiatives. She currently serve as a Co-Investigator for a national study currently being conducted to assess the impact of state practice barriers and the COVID- 19 pandemic on advanced practice nursing roles and practice. She is a past president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the World Federation of Critical Care Nurses. She currently serves on the Board of the World Federation of Intensive and Critical Care. She is a Fellow in the American College of Critical Care Medicine, the American Academy of Nursing, the National Academies of Practice, the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, and the Institute of the Medicine of Chicago.