Associate Professor
University of Minnesota
Blaine, MN
Bonnie Westra, PhD, RN, FAAN is an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing.
The consistent theme in her contributions to nursing is the development, translation, and effective use of nursing data in electronic health records (EHRs) for nursing practice and research. She led the effort in designing an EHR tailored to expose the impact of nursing in homecare, hospice, and public health.
As Co-Director for the Center for Nursing Minimum Data Set Knowledge Discovery and Coordinator for the Doctorate in Nursing Practice Specialty in Nursing Informatics, Dr. Westra provides strong leadership in nursing informatics education and research.
Bonnie's research has focused on the development and use of nursing terminologies to represent nursing data, information, and knowledge in electronic health records. As a co-investigator on an NIH funded study, she led the development of the physical functional status outcomes for the Nursing Outcome Classification. Her current research focuses on the reuse of the Omaha System and other EHR data to develop predictive models for improvement in homecare outcomes.
Bonnie is a strong leader in health and nursing informatics. She is on the interdisciplinary Board of the American Medical Informatics (AMIA), she Chairs the AMIA Nursing Informatics History Project, Co-Chairs the Alliance for Nursing Informatics, represents nursing on the Minnesota eHealth Advisory Committee, and co-Chairs the Minnesota Effective Use of EHRs workgroup.
Bonnie received her BSN from the College of St. Teresa; her MSN from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, College of Nursing; and, her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, College of Nursing.