Three more URI College of Nursing students have joined Ph.D. student Emily Haynes as recipients of Cynthia & Thomas Sculco Graduate Nursing Research scholarships, which cover much of their expenses, allowing them to focus exclusively on their research and studies.
Today we take a look at one of the students benefitting from the gift from alumnus Cynthia Sculco ’65 and her husband Thomas, and the research she has planned.
Devon Carroll
Hometown: Cambridge, MA
Education track: PhD program
Previous education: BS, psychology, Bates College; MS, Nurse Practitioner, Yale University.
Experience: Nurse Practitioner, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Boston Children’s Hospital
Research: Carroll’s research interest focuses on caring for the caregivers of children battling psychological disorders. In one study, funded by Boston Children’s Hospital, Carroll is looking at caregiver burden in parents of children with psychotic illness. Through interviews and written communications, she is measuring caregivers’ level of burden and looking at levels of social support, and ways to improve the parent-child relationship. She is in the final stage of data collection and analysis, ahead of a planned presentation at the American Psychological Association conference in August.
Carroll is also working on a pilot study involving Family Talk, a family-based intervention originally designed to prevent depression in family members of adults with depression, which she has adapted to help support family members of children with psychosis. She hopes to bring her study with her to URI to work with other clinicians in the Providence area.
“I’m really interested in supporting parents and siblings and family members of children going through these illnesses,” Carroll said. “We’re working on family communication, psycho education, and empowerment of the families. It’s really a lot about improving communication among family members.”
Carroll is also interested in the autism spectrum population, looking at how to improve experiences of children with autism at the hospital, and treatment of anxiety among the population.