Dr. Griffin 4RN Success

Biography

Dr. Griffin was a member of the first graduating class of the School of Nursing, in 1974, at Salem State College in Massachusetts.  She then embarked on a long clinical career in psychiatric nursing, working for many years at McLean Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.  There, she worked in settings as diverse as Admissions, Geriatrics, Young Adults, and Alcohol and Substance Abuse.

Later, she earned her Master’s Degree in Nursing from Saint Louis University.  By then, her clinical experience included Nightingale, a unique in-patient setting dedicated to the treatment of nurses who had developed drug and alcohol problems, or who had diverted drugs at work.  Along the way, she had worked at the University of Arkansas Student Health Center, first as the Supervisor for evening services at this large clinic and in-patient center serving 22,000 college students, and then as the Center’s first liaison nurse for psychiatric nursing, acting as an advocate and treatment expert for students with mental health problems.  She also lectured in the Department of Nursing on clinical psychiatric topics.

Dr. Griffin also worked for several years in a joint collaboration of the Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, and the Connecticut Mental Health Center, a full service treatment center for Connecticut citizens with mental health problems.  There, she managed a multi-faceted research program, including trials for a new generation of antipsychotic medications.  Recruiting patients, enforcing study protocols, maintaining meticulous records and data, and working with psychiatrists and major pharmaceutical companies, Dr. Griffin played a role in the ultimate FDA approval of new drugs like Risperidone, Olanzapine, and Ziprasidone.  She published her first papers with collaborators at Yale.

In 2005, Dr. Griffin earned her PhD in Nursing from the School of Nursing at Columbia University in New York.  She was also honored with Columbia’s Dissertation of the Year Award for her research into the factors that contribute to nurse decision making in the treatment of pain in children.  Subsequently, she taught nursing in a variety of settings, including an ADN program at Samaritan Hospital School of Nursing, Troy, NY, an MSN program at Regis College in Wellesley, MA, and for many years, in the College of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where she served as Chair of the Community Health Nursing Department.  Over the years, Dr. Griffin has published numerous papers in scholarly journals, such as Research in Nursing and Health, including two generated from her doctoral dissertation at Columbia.

While at UMass-Dartmouth, Dr. Griffin was enlisted to investigate and improve the College’s NCLEX passage rate.  She implemented a program of electronic testing, test preparation products, counseling, and structured study plans.  As a result of programs she developed and implemented, the University’s NCLEX pass rate improved by 13 percentage points.

Dr. Griffin has been happily married for 40 years.  She and her husband, long a publisher of nursing textbooks, are the proud parents of two very successful children.  Dr. Griffin is an avid runner and reader.  She works out of her home in the coastal community of Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, once a bustling 18^th century shipbuilding center, now a serene waterfront village with tree-lined streets, graceful homes once belonging to the captains of whaling ships, and beaches hidden along a meandering coastline.

 

Why NCLEX-RN™ is such a Challenge

The NCLEX-RN™ demands that you integrate all your knowledge into making clinical decisions in order to answer questions that call for the best answer.  The questions are written, approved, and improved upon by practicing nurses and experts with years of clinical judgment and decision making.  The NCLEX-RN™ demands integration of knowledge into clinical decision making.

That’s where Dr. Griffin and her methodologies give you the edge for NCLEX success.