A CAREER DEFINED BY CARING
Looking back at her career in nursing research, Linda E. Pollack,
Ph.D. '88,A.R.N.P., sees her life as a continuous effort to help
individuals cope with mental illness.The University of Miami's
first Ph.D. nursing graduate, Pollack decided to pursue a doctorate in
nursing based on her experiences as a psychiatric nurse collecting data
for others' investigations.
"I'd been involved with research at the Miami Veterans Administration
Medical Center for several years," she recalls of her participation in
a National Institutes of Health-funded project on patients with diabetes.
"I liked the process of research, the intellectual
stimulation, and thought I could
make a contribution."
Pollack, who holds an M.S.N. in psychiatric
nursing, considered a number of doctoral
programs before learning that UM
was launching its own program in 1985.
She fondly remembers lectures by visiting
nurse scholars. Mostly, though, she recalls
the support of faculty and fellow students
and the classes on qualitative research that
launched her own investigations into group
therapy for individuals with bipolar disorder.
For more than a decade, as a faculty member at the University of
Texas-Houston Health Science Center's School of Nursing, Pollack used
her research findings to develop a self-management model of inpatient
group therapy specifically for individuals with bipolar disorder and
addiction.
When asked why she chose a doctorate in nursing, Pollack points
to the perspective nursing brings to the research arena. "The scientific
method is the same regardless of who's doing it. Only the focus and the
problems are different," she says."My focus, for example, was never on
curing bipolar disorder but on helping patients cope with the disease."
