SLU's Karen Moore Heads to the Emerald Isle to Train Advanced Practice Nurses

Thanks to a Fulbright Specialist Award, Moore will Develop a Curriculum for Irish Nurses to Earn a DNP

ST. LOUIS —Karen Moore, DNP, associate professor of nursing at Saint Louis University’s Trudy Busch Valentine School of Nursing, has received a Fulbright Specialist Award. 

Moore, who studies global health and international exchange, will spend up to six weeks in Ireland developing the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) role and curriculum, strengthening ongoing international nursing exchange at Dublin City University, and working on the development and curriculum for simulation within their nursing curriculum. She currently teaches in the DNP program at SLU and helped to design and coordinate a simulation center at a prior institution. 

In 2008, Saint Louis University and the Valentine School of Nursing became the first in the St. Louis area to offer a DNP degree for advanced practice nurses (APN) focused on patient care.

“Facilitating collaborations between nurses and nursing students across the globe helps to enrich our understanding of health care delivery models and provides alternatives to our way of approaching a problem,” Moore said. “Anytime you work within a community — locally or globally — you find solutions to issues that work for that community.”

Moore currently serves as secretary of the International Council of Nurses Nurse Practitioner/Advanced Practice Nurse Network. She says the U.S. is an early developer of the APN role and has a well-developed framework for education, practice, certification, and licensure that has been used as models in other countries.

"Ireland has a different health delivery model and community needs that their APNs fill," she said. "The curriculum that we will develop will not simply be a cut-and-paste American model but one that takes into account all of the needs of the Irish people and their health care system.

Moore will help them structure the curriculum to meet their needs using knowledge gained from working within the U.S. system as a certification board commissioner, a faculty member at SLU and a practicing advanced practice nurse.

Moore is one of over 400 U.S. citizens who share expertise with host institutions abroad through the Fulbright Specialist Program each year. Recipients of Fulbright Specialist awards are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement, demonstrated leadership in their field, and their potential to foster long-term cooperation between institutions in the U.S. and abroad. 

Moore spent many years training nurse practitioners on how to treat older adults. St. Louis Magazine recently named Moore a 2023 Excellence in Nursing honoree for her research efforts. In 2019, she was inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, the highest professional recognition in nursing.

About Valentine School of Nursing

Founded in 1928, the Trudy Busch Valentine School of Nursing at Saint Louis University has achieved a national reputation for its innovative and pioneering programs. Offering bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral nursing programs, its faculty members are nationally recognized for their teaching, research and clinical expertise.

About the Fulbright Program

Since its establishment in 1946, the Fulbright Program has given more than 400,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and scientists the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas, and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.