Dr. Tracey Yap came to the Duke University School of Nursing in August 2011 from the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing, where she was assistant professor and deputy-director of nursing at the NIOSH-sponsored Education Research Center. Dr. Yap is Assistant Professor at DUSON, a John A. Hartford Foundation Claire M. Fagin Fellow, and a Senior Fellow in the Duke University Center for Aging and Human Development.
Dr. Yap completed her PhD at the University of Cincinnati. Her dissertation research focused on a tailored behavioral intervention to increase intentional physical activity among workers in manufacturing settings. With funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative, she then developed a cost-effective, nurse-led intervention that reduced prevalence of pressure ulcers in long-term care facilities by increasing resident mobility through a prompting system specifically tailored to each facility using musical cues. In the course of this study, Dr. Yap’s research team recognized that the occupational subculture of nursing in each facility played an important role in implementing the intervention, a discovery which led to development of the Nursing Culture Assessment Tool (NCAT), a new psychometric tool for evaluating nursing culture.
Dr. Yap is committed to improving the care outcomes of older adults in long-term care settings, particularly with respect to prevention and management of common yet seemingly intractable geriatric syndromes such as facility-acquired pressure ulcers. She has been selected by the international 2014 Pressure Ulcer Guideline Development Group as a member of the working groups for both older adults and repositioning/mobilization.
