Lecturer

Dr. Watach completed a PhD in nursing science at Penn State University and a postdoctoral fellowship in sleep research at the University of Pennsylvania. She currently holds positions as a Lecturer in the School of Nursing and an Instructor in the Perelman School of Medicine and is a Scholar in the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation. Across these positions, Dr. Watach applies her skills as an implementation scientist to facilitate the translation of evidence to practice. In her own program of research, she focuses on the design and implementation of innovative, scalable, evidence-based solutions for improving patient, provider, and system-level outcomes in sleep medicine. As a teacher, she describes her involvement in the DNP program as “an opportunity to encourage the next generation of nurse leaders to see research as something more than just ‘lofty’ findings published in a journal”. Her teaching philosophy encourages DNP students to ponder, explore, pursue, and conquer their greatest perceived healthcare-related tribulations by applying evidence to improve clinical practice through the development and completion of timely, warranted, and evidence-based quality/practice improvement projects.