Elizabeth (Beth) Terhune

I am an inpatient palliative care nurse practitioner at VA Boston Health Care in and a PhD student (dissertation proposal phase) at the Tan Chingfen Graduate School of Nursing at the UMass Chan Medical School. My earliest work combined music, therapeutic care, and pain management within the community and long-term care settings as a hospice volunteer and an oncology massage therapist/lymphedema therapist in the early 2000s. My passion for supporting older adults living with serious medical illnesses led me to nursing and my specialization in palliative care as an educator and a clinician. My goal is the development of toolsets to support quality of life for individuals living with dementia, frailty, dysphagia, and delirium. I teach and mentor physicians and nurse practitioners training in palliative and geriatric care. My current dissertation proposal focuses on integrating the work of music therapists, speech and language pathologists, clinicians, nursing, and nursing assistants in supporting quality of life and wellbeing of care-dependent individuals living with dementia in Boston-based long-term care settings.