Jed Diamond, MA, LCSW, PhD

Jed Diamond is the founder and director of MenAlive, a health program that helps men live long and well. Though focused on men’s health, MenAlive is also for women who care about the health of the men in their lives. Jed is the author of ten books, including his latest: MenAlive: Stop Killer Stress with Simple Energy Healing Tools. Since its inception in 1992, Jed has been on the Board of Advisors of the Men’s Health Network. He is also a member of the International Society for the Study of the Aging Male and serves as a member of the international scientific board of the World Congress on Gender and Men’s Health. Visit his website at www.MenAlive.com.

Nancy R. Kirsch, PT, DPT, PhD, FAPTA

Nancy Kirsch is director of the Doctor of Physical Therapy program at Rutgers University. Previously she practiced in a variety of settings including inpatient rehabilitation, acute care, long-term care, and home care. She owned a private practice for more than twenty years and now practices in an educational setting.

Nancy has been active in professional organizations throughout her career. She has served the American Physical Therapy Association, first at the state level and then the national, where she was a member of the Ethics Document Revision Task Force. She also served on the APTA Ethics and Judicial Committee, including a term as chairperson. She is currently on the APTA Scope of Practice Task Force and vice president of the Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy.

Nancy has written and presented on a wide range of ethical and professional topics. She contributes a monthly article to PT in Motion. She encourages you to share comments on issues of ethics at http://www.apta.org/PTinMotion.

Fran Laughton, RN, PHN, MSN, FNP, Lead Nurse Planner

Fran Laughton is the co-founder, assistant director, and clinical coordinator for the Registered Nursing program at Mendocino College in Ukiah, California. She has classroom and clinical content certification by the State of California Board of Registered Nursing in Medical-Surgical, Psychiatry, Maternal/Child, Pediatrics, and Pharmacology, and is the lead instructor for these content areas. In addition, Fran is in private practice as a family nurse practitioner.

Upon earning her RN from City College of San Francisco, Fran began her nursing career at Children’s Hospital there. In the years that followed, she led a research program for the University of California, San Francisco; worked in a birthing center in Willits, California; co-authored a model maternity care grant; and worked for thirteen years doing medical investigation and case management for Child Protective Services.

In her role as lead nurse planner for ATrain Education, Fran is involved with the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the continuing education courses offered on this website.

Tracey Long, RN, PhD, APRN

Tracey is a registered nurse who has worked in critical care, telemetry, and primary care for almost 30 years. She developed health education and diabetes programs in Spanish for local hospitals in Las Vegas, Nevada, where she now resides. Tracey earned a double bachelor’s degree in Nursing Science and Spanish from Brigham Young University, a master’s degree in Public Health Education at California College of Health Sciences, and an MSN in Nursing Education at UNLV. She completed her PhD in Nursing Education and Leadership.

Marian McDonald, RN, MSN, CIC (retired)

Marian McDonald is a clinician, mentor, teacher, and consultant. She is board-certified (CIC) in infection control (retired) and says she has been "chasing germs" for thirty years! Marian has helped to develop legislation and has served in local, state, and national organizations that promote infection prevention, disaster preparedness and response, and public health. Her devotion to disaster preparedness arises from more than twenty years as a volunteer nurse for the American Red Cross.

Marian has written and lectured on infection control and prevention and is a member of the Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs) Advisory Committee for the California Department of Public Health. She is a past president of the California Association for Professionals in Infection Control Coordinating Council (APIC) and a member of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control.

JoAnn O'Toole, RN, BSN

JoAnn O'Toole retired in August 2017 as an ED nurse at Kaiser Redwood City in California, which is a comprehensive stroke center. Prior to that JoAnn worked for fifteen years in the neurosurgery department at Kaiser, seeing patients with a wide variety of medical and neurologic problems. She has spent time living and studying in Mexico City and uses her language skills on the job to facilitate communication with Spanish-speaking patients. In addition to the ordinary certificates an ED nurse maintains, including ACLS and PALS, she has specialty training in sepsis and acute stroke management. She now lives with her husband in Santa Rosa, where they have been renovating their new house since she retired.

Lauren Robertson, BA, MPT

Lauren Robertson is a physical therapist and is co-owner of ATrain Education. She has worked primarily in long-term care settings but spent a short time in California Children's Services working with children and adolescents who had physical disabilities. For six years she served as an assistant professor at Western Institute of Science and Health, teaching neuroanatomy and clinical procedure classes to physical therapy and occupational therapy assistant students. Teaching piqued her interest in medical writing, and in 1997 she founded one of the first continuing education companies to offer classes on the Internet. She left that company in 2008 and co-founded ATrain Education, fulfilling a dream to design a website and content management system that utilizes current Internet technology.

Susan Walters Schmid, PhD

Susan has an extensive background in research and writing in both academic and practical settings. She earned BA degrees in History and European Studies from George Mason University; an MA in Public History from Appalachian State University, where she worked as the editorial assistant for the journal Albion; and a PhD in History, along with a Certificate in Scholarly Publishing, from Arizona State University. She served as a permissions editor and an assistant production editor for Wadsworth Publishing Company and as an acquisitions editor for AltaMira Press. She worked as a desktop publishing specialist for Arizona State University and taught several courses for the History Department and the Scholarly Publishing Program.

Susan currently owns and operates Teton Editorial Services, which provides editing, copyediting, proofreading, InDesign page layout, indexing, research/writing, and WordPress website design and management services for individual and corporate clients. She is co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Tudor England, and author of two bios in A Biographical Encyclopedia of Early Modern Englishwomen: Exemplary Lives and Memorable Acts, 1500–1650 a review article on Anne Boleyn for History Review, and an article about Monticello for The Historian. Susan is an invaluable contributing editor on the ATrain Education editorial team, using her research, editing, and writing skills to update courses that require extensive understanding of state and federal regulations.

Stephanie Zeman, RN, MSN

Stephanie Zeman, RN, MSN, started working in dementia care in 1989. Her twenty-plus years of experience in this area began with floor nursing and culminated with Director of Nursing, who was charged with creating two 20-bed dementia units. Zeman chaired a committee that developed the original training manuals for the Virginia Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association (now the National Capital Area Chapter) and is on their speakers bureau. Zeman has taught classes and seminars on dementia care, spoken several times at the National Alzheimer’s Educational Conferences, functioned as a nurse expert witness in cases involving abuse of dementia patients in long-term care facilities, and worked with the Justice Department in nursing home surveys.

Zeman recently wrote a book about her concept of common-sense dementia care. Kisses for Elizabeth: Common Sense Guidelines for Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care received the Today’s Caregiver magazine’s 2013 award. Her website, kissesforelizabeth.com, presents three of over forty true stories about her patients, what they taught her, and how common-sense care was used to change negative behaviors and improve their quality of life.

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