Dr. Cronenwett is professor and dean of the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2003 she was appointed the
associate chief nursing officer for academic affairs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Hospitals.
Her professional experience includes active duty in the US Navy Nurse Corps, staff nurse experiences in maternity and pediatric nursing, previous faculty positions at Stanford University and the University of Michigan, and fourteen years as a nurse researcher and administrator at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH. Prior to her appointment as dean, she was the Sarah Frances Russell distinguished professor of nursing systems at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Books
Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, Committee on Identifying and Preventing Medication Errors. (2007). Preventing medication errors. Aspden, P., Wolcott, J.A., Bootman, J.L., & Cronenwett, L.R. (Eds). Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Articles in Referred Journals
Cronenwett, L., Sherwood, G., Barnsteiner, J., Disch, J., Johnson, J., Mitchell, P, & Warren, J. (2007). Quality and safety education for nurses. Nursing Outlook, 55(3), 122-131.
Smith, E. L., Cronenwett, L., & Sherwood, G. (2007). Current assessments of quality and safety education in nursing. Nursing Outlook, 55(3), 132-137.
Lynn, J., Baily, M.A., Bottrell, M., Jennings, B., Levine, R.J., Davidoff, F., et al. (2007). The ethics of using quality improvement methods in health care. Annals of Internal Medicine, 146(9), 666-673.
Dracup, K., Cronenwett, L., Meleis, A., & Benner, P. (2005). Reflections on the doctorate of nursing practice. Nursing Outlook, 53(4), 177-182.
Dr. Cronenwett is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and serves as a member of the National Advisory Committee for the Robert Wood Johnson-IHI Transforming Care at the Bedside Project.She is also a member of the Board of Directors of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine. In 2005-06, she co-chaired the Institute of Medicine Task Force on Identifying and Reducing Medication Errors and completed four years as president of the North Carolina Deans and Directors of Baccalaureate and Higher Degree Nursing Programs. Prior to these appointments she served as a member of the National Advisory Council for Nursing Research at the National Institutes of Health and as a member of the editorial advisory board of the Joint Commission Journal on Quality Improvement. She also served the profession as president of the New Hampshire Nurses Association, chair of the American Nurses Association’s Congress of Nursing Practice, and secretary of the American Academy of Nursing.
Dr. Cronenwett is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and the National Academies of Practice. She has received the New Hampshire Nursing Leadership Award, the Eastern Nursing Research Society's Distinguished Contribution to Nursing Research Award, the Distinguished Professional Service Award of the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses, and the Sigma Theta Tau International Research Dissemination Award.
Currently, Dean Cronenwett is principal investigator of an RWJF-funded initiative, Quality and Safety Education for Nurses. Through this work and her professional publications and presentations, she seeks to improve healthcare education to ensure that future health professionals will be committed to and capable of creating and constantly improving the safety of the healthcare delivery systems in which they work.
