School of Nursing

Education

• PhD

Biosketch

Melinda Swenson has been certified as a Family Nurse Practitioner since 1980 and has taught nurse practitioners for more than 20 years in both adult and family specialties. She developed, with Dr. Sherry Sims, the Narrative Centered Curriculum used in the Family Nurse Practitioner Major at the IU School of Nursing. She has presented this curriculum nationally and internationally, highlighting modifications of Patient-Based Learning and other narrative approaches to teaching and learning. Her research interests include family health issues, the meaning of home care-giving, the experience of living at risk for Huntington’s Disease, and nurse practitioner curricular concerns, especially reflective teaching and practice. She conducts and supervises research using qualitative methodologies, especially hermeneutics and phenomenology. She is currently Professor of Nursing and the Coordinator of the FNP major at Indiana University.  She is active in the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculties and the National League for Nursing, from whom she received the 2001 National Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Selected Publications