Dr. Diane Hoem Elmore recently relocated to Southern Nevada from Northeastern Nevada and started teaching at Touro University in January 2012. Dr. Elmore received both her PhD and MSN from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, her BSN from Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa, and her ADN degree from Great Basin College in Elko, Nevada. Prior to her Nursing career, Dr. Elmore was active in hospital governance issues and served on a hospital board of trustees, chair of the hospital board and chair of the Nevada State Board of Hospital Governing Boards. She was a co-founder of both the Elko County Family Resource Center and the Elko General Hospital Foundation.Dr. Elmore has taught graduate level nursing education courses, physical assessment, research, and leadership courses at Capella University and Excelsior College. She has taught critical care and advanced medical-surgical nursing, research, and leadership at the undergraduate level at Great Basin College and also at Walden University. Her current research interests are focused primarily on methods and strategies for incorporating the use of nursing theory to enhance nursing education, examining issues associated with the faculty-learner relationship, organizational management issues in nursing academia, and the study of chronicity and health issues of aging populations in rural and frontier areas. Dr. Elmore has worked as a family nurse practitioner, the director of nursing education in an acute care hospital, as an emergency nurse, a school nurse, and a patient education nurse. Additionally, she is a member of Sigma Theta Tau, Phi Kappa Phi, AACN, and NLN.

Dr. Elizabeth Fildes is an Associate Professor at Touro University School of Nursing and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Nevada School of Medicine.Dr. Elizabeth Fildes founded the Nevada Tobacco Users’ Helpline in 1997. She was given the Public Health Hero Award in 1999 and the Nevada Health Care Hero Award in 2011 for her outstanding dedication to reducing tobacco use in Southern Nevada. She has procured over $7,000,000 in federal and state funding for this project. Dr Fildes was appointed and commissioned by the Governor of the State of Nevada to serve as a member of the Healthy Nevada Task Force for eight years. This Task Force awarded funds to programs to decrease tobacco use in the state of Nevada. As a member of this task force, she chaired the Subcommittee on Substance Abuse, where all of the tobacco control grants were reviewed. She continues to be an advocate for all victims of nicotine addiction. She is currently looking for innovative ways to fund the treatment of nicotine dependence through public-private partnerships.Dr. Fildes’ translational research activities focus on nicotine addiction treatment. Her long term goal is to increase treatment access to rural and underserved communities via distance technology. She has made scholarly presentations on this topic in local, regional, national and international levels.Dr. Fildes is a grant reviewer for the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS). She is a member of the Addiction Nursing Certification Board (ANCB)

Dr. Henkelman has been in the nursing profession since 1982. He holds a bachelor’s degree in zoology from the University of Wisconsin, a bachelor’s degree in nursing and a master’s degree in critical care nursing from the University of Texas, and a doctorate in educational leadership from Argosy University. He has practiced nursing, primarily in adult intensive care units, in Texas, Montana, and Nevada. While practicing as a Critical Care Clinical Nurse Specialist in 1995, he was recognized as the March of Dimes Nurse of the Year in Critical Care. While teaching nursing at Nevada State University he was awarded a Heritage Faculty Fellowship.Dr. Henkelman’s research and publishing has been primarily in the area of end-of-life ethics. The title of his doctoral dissertation was The Effect of Health Literacy on the Utilization of Advance Directives.In addition to his teaching duties as an assistant professor at Touro University Nevada, he serves as Administrative Vice President of the Mabuhay Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to providing educational assistance to children in underserved areas in the Philippines.

Carrie M. O’Reilly, PhD, MSN, RN, received her BSN from Oral Roberts University, her MSN from University of Phoenix, and her PhD from Touro University International. She has 18 years of adult critical care clinical experience including thoracic transplant nursing, four years in clinical education and two years in nursing service administration. Her areas of research interest are characteristics of clinical judgment and critical thinking skill acquisition in nursing education. Professor O’Reilly joined the School of Nursing in 2008.

Ramona Panter graduated from University Nevada Las Vegas with a BSN. She has worked in the fields of End Stage Renal Disease patients, I.V therapy, High Risk Obstetrics, and Labor and Delivery. Ramona completed her MSN in nursing at University of Phoenix and is currently enrolled in a PhD program. Her teaching career has been at Community College of Southern Nevada, University of Southern Nevada, and at Touro University. She is currently working at Touro University Nevada and University Medical Center.