Barbara Bates-Jensen is Professor of Nursing and Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the past National Associate Director for Pressure Ulcer Research and Implementation for the Veteran’s Administration (VA) Spinal Cord Injury Quality Enhancement Research Initiative Program center in Chicago. Her research is focused on improving pressure ulcer and related wound care using technology and methods of translating research into practice in nursing homes and other health care settings. The National Institute for Nursing Research has funded her research evaluating a non-visual method of detecting early pressure ulcers using a device that measures skin and tissue water or subepidermal moisture in nursing home residents. VA grants have supported her work with the same methods in veterans with spinal cord injury. In conjunction with the Wireless Health Institute and two professors at UCLA she invented a device to obtain these measures in real practice settings, the SEM Scanner. She is the developer of a tool for chronic wound assessment, the Bates-Jensen Wound Assessment Tool (BWAT), which is used worldwide and has been incorporated into a variety of electronic medical record systems. She is co-editor of the book, “Wound Care: A Collaborative Practice Manual for Health Care Professionals” now in its 4th edition, a past board member and conference co-chair for the Wound Healing Society and the Association for the Advancement of Wound Care, past Vice President of the National Pressure Ulcer Advisory Panel and a fellow in the American Academy of Nursing. She volunteered in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and is the founder and President of the Wound Reach Foundation, a non-profit charity working to improve wound care globally. |