Guidelines for Nurse Practitioners in Gynecologic Settings

Joellen W. Hawkins, PhD, RN, WHNP-BC-E, FAAN, FAANP, practiced as an OB/GYN women's health care nurse practitioner for 36 years. She was a professor in the School of Nursing, University of Connecticut at Storrs for 5 years, and at Boston College Connell School of Nursing from 1975 to 1978 and 1983 to 2008. Practice sites included 5 years at the University of Connecticut Student Health Services (Storrs); 16 years at Crittenton Hastings House Reproductive Health Services, Brighton, Massachusetts (1984 to 2000); 6 years at the Women's Clinic, Pine Street Inn, Boston (2000-2006); and 9 years at Sydney Borum Community Health Center, Boston (2000-2009). From 2008 to the present, she has been writer-in-residence, Simmons College School of Nursing and Health Sciences, Boston, and from 2013 to the present, she has been an editor of faculty manuscripts prior to their submission to a journal and editor of book chapters written by faculty members of the College of Nursing, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Diane M. Roberto-Nichols, BS, APRN-C, is a nurse practitioner in both women's health and adult medicine. She has practiced as an OB/GYN nurse practitioner for more than 30 years. She recently retired from Ellington OB/GYN Associates in Ellington, Connecticut, and from the University of Connecticut Student Health Services (Storrs). The focus of her practice has been on women's health, starting as coordinator of the Women's Health Clinic at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where she was instrumental in making contraception and confidential health care available to female students. She also co-developed a protocol and implemented an assault crisis center for sexually and physically abused students at the university, as well as co-authored the protocols that served as the prototype for this book. She continues to be active in women's health issues and to provide education to women throughout their life span. J. Lynn Stanley-Haney, MA, APRN-C, is an adult medicine nurse practitioner with special practice areas that include gynecology and psychiatry. Until recently, she worked in both a private OB/GYN practice and a private psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic medication management practice. Of late, she has limited her work to her own private practice in psychiatry but remains keenly interested in, and an advocate for, quality care in the areas of women's health and access to health care, which has been her longtime area of passion and concentrated effort. As the director of nursing for the University of Connecticut Student Health Services, she worked closely with the university's Women's Health Clinic in ensuring quality of care, in addition to providing direct clinical care to women. Along with her longtime colleague and co-author, Diane M. Roberto-Nichols, she co-developed and implemented a 24-hour sexual assault crisis service for physically abused and sexually assaulted women students. Together, they also co-authored the protocols that served as the prototype for this book. Since leaving the university, she has worked to implement and manage, as well as maintain, a practice in state-funded, school-based health clinics. Currently, in addition to her clinical practice, she supports and works with several organizations that advocate for women and girls.