Diane Skiba, PhD

After she earned her BA degree in psychology at Southern Connecticut State College, Dr. Skiba completed an MEd in educational research and a PhD in research methods, evaluation, and measurement at The University of Virginia. Dr. Skiba began working as Director of the Computer Resource Lab and assistant professor at Boston University School of Nursing while completing her PhD and continued in these positions until 1986 when she was appointed associate professor at the University of Massachusetts at Worcester Graduate School of Nursing. She moved to Colorado in 1989, where she worked as associate professor in the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center School of Nursing. She was appointed Associate Dean for Informatics and Director, Academic Innovations, in 1997. Dr. Skiba currently serves as Option Coordinator, Health Care Informatics, and associate professor of nursing at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Dr. Skiba has consistently advocated and promoted the need to educate nurses in the field of nursing informatics. After several years of teaching computer technology courses and developing assessment of competencies, she coauthored in the late 1980s a seminal nursing informatics textbook. Her scholarly articles focus on learning resource centers, needs for health care networks, and Web-based and distance learning educational programs. She is often invited to be a keynote speaker at national and international conferences. For over 20 years, Dr. Skiba has been dedicated to teaching courses, and more specifically developing specialization masterís and doctoral programs in nursing informatics. She has been also involved in the design and development of telehealth and Web-based educational applications. She is one of the very few non-nurse professionals employed in schools of nursing and involved in informatics education of nurses and other health professionals. Dr. Skibaís research has resulted in useful applications, such as the Denver Free-Net (1992), a community computing system whose goal was to increase access to electronic health care information throughout the state of Colorado. This system served as a foundation for telehealth applications, which included electronic dissemination of patient educational materials, disease-specific resources, interactive support groups, listings of support groups throughout the Denver Metro region, United Way resources, and computer mediated learning for health care professionals.