Marianne LaPorte Matzo, PhD, APRN, GNP-BC, FAAN, is a Professor and the Frances E. and A. Earl Ziegler Chair in Palliative Care Nursing at The University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center College of Nursing in Oklahoma City. She is also a member of the Doctoral Faculty at The Union Institute and University of Cincinnati, and a Soros Scholar for the Project on Death in America. She was awarded a Doctorate in Gerontology from the University of Massachusetts--Boston and a master's degree in Nursing from the Gerontological Nurse Practitioner Program at the University of Massachusetts--Lowell. Her work for the Project on Death in America has included undergraduate curriculum development on the care of the dying patient and family, work as a hospice nurse, and continuing education programs related to death, dying, and bereavement. Her research has included nurse's practices of assisted suicide and a quantitative study of health care providers' responses to the death of their patients. Dr. Matzo has presented educational programs both regionally and nationally on many topics related to care of the dying person, gerontological nursing, and curriculum development. Her work has been published in Nurse Practitioner, Nurse Educator, Geriatric Nursing, Nursing Homes, Geriatric Psychiatry, The Journal of Gerontological Nursing, Gerontology and Geriatrics Education, Applied Nursing Research, Heart and Lung, Nursing Education Perspectives and the Geriatric Clinics of North America.
Deborah Witt Sherman, PhD, APRN, ANP-BC, FAAN, is Associate Professor, Director of the Doctoral Program at New York University College of Nursing, and faculty of the Advanced Practice Palliative Care Master's and Post-Master's Programs. She is also Co-Director and faculty for the Bronx Veterans Medical Center Interdisciplinary Palliative Care Fellowship Program.
Dr. Sherman's background in critical care nursing, hospice nursing, and her certification as an adult nurse practitioner, as well as her research focus on populations with life-threatening and terminal illness, are foundational to her expertise and commitment to palliative care, for which she developed the first nurse practitioner palliative care master's and post-master's programs in the United States.
In 1998, she was awarded the prestigious Project on Death in America Faculty Scholars Fellowship, funded by the Soros Foundation, to implement the Advanced Practice Palliative Care Master's Program at NYU and to participate as a nurse practitioner on the palliative care team of Mount Sinai Medical Center. Dr. Sherman was also awarded an advanced nursing practice training grant by the Department of Health and Human Services to fund the Advanced Practice Palliative Care Master's Program ate NYU.
Dr. Sherman has been funded by the National Institute of Health for a two-year pilot study entitled "Interventions and Quality of Life for Patients with Advanced Cancer or AIDS and their Family Caregivers." She is also a co-investigator on a four-year randomized control trial funded by the National Cancer Institute to examine the effects of psychoeducation and telephone counseling on the adjustment of women and partners experiencing early stage breast cancer.
Dr. Sherman is a member of several editorial boards and professional nursing organizations including the National Hospice Organization, Hospice and Palliative Care Nurses Association, The Association of Death Educators and Grief Counselors, Oncology Nursing Society, and the Association for Nurses in AIDS Care. Dr. Sherman serves on the advisory board and as faculty on the End of Life Nursing Education Consortium, whose aim is to educate nurses in palliative care across the country. She has served as a member of an Interdisciplinary Steering Committee of a National Consensus Project, which developed national guidelines for quality palliative care. She has led the initiative to develop the Scope and Standards for Advance Practice Palliative Care Nursing approved by the ANA. Dr. Sherman secured funding to develop the first national Advance Practice Palliative Care Credentialing Examination, which was completed in May 2003.
