Diane L Padden PhD, CRNP, FAANP
Diane Padden, PhD, CRNP recently retired from the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) as the vice president of professional practice and partnerships where she was responsible for planning, developing, and implementing activities and programs related to professional practice. Dr. Padden represented AANP and participated in a wide variety of multi-stakeholder meetings related to nurse practitioner practice such as clinical practice guidelines, practice models, patient outcomes, quality measures, and reimbursement. She also developed, established and maintained partnerships with other organizations and agencies relevant to practice initiatives that support delivery of high quality of care by nurse practitioners and disseminated this essential information to AANP members.
With over 20 years of direct patient care experience as a practicing family nurse practitioner, Dr Padden has both public and private practice settings expertise with a focus on health promotion and disease prevention. She is keenly aware of the individual responsibility of clinicians to provide quality care in the currently rapid changing and complex health system. Additionally, Dr. Padden has expertise in military culture and their beneficiaries’ unique challenges related to frequent separations and social isolation. She has conducted several research studies and published in the areas of stress, coping, and health promotion behaviors among spouses of military service members.
Previously, Dr. Padden was an associate professor in the Daniel K. Inouye Graduate School of Nursing at the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, Maryland were she taught in the masters and doctoral programs and held several leadership positions, including Family Nurse Practitioner program director and chair of the Department of Health, Injury and Disease Prevention. With over 14 years of experience in education and curriculum design Dr. Padden has expertise in the essentials of nurse practitioner education and was a site evaluator for the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE) conducting accreditation visits at schools of nursing seeking accreditation.
Dr. Padden received her Master of Nursing Degree from Emory University and her Doctoral Degree in nursing from The Catholic University of America. She was inducted as a fellow in the American Association of Nurse Practitioners in 2010. She has received several awards including, outstanding faculty, outstanding research abstract for AANP, and the Janet Rexrode Southby Prize in Nursing Research.