SPECIAL SESSION: It All Started With the Belief That Stress Can Cause Illnesses

Description/Overview: In this special session, Dr. Tsai will present her program of research with a special focus on her work related to the role played by stress and autonomic nervous function in the development of hypertension, coronary heart disease and insomnia as well as determining the effects of biofeedback and relaxation modalities on improving these conditions. Pei-Shan Tsai, PhD, RN, a distinguished professor and associate dean at Taipei Medical University College of Nursing, Taiwan, focuses her research on the link between stress-response systems and chronic illnesses and outcomes of nursing care of patients with stress-related illnesses. Dr. Tsai's program of research development started with her belief that stress can cause illnesses. She began making contributions toward understanding the relationship between stress and diseases and effective treatments for stress-related diseases when she was studying for her doctoral degree in the early 2000s. Tsai's expertise includes using both physiological and behavioral measures in research for the understanding of the mechanisms and efficacy of nursing interventions. She also plays a vital role in demonstrating important health factors, disease prevalence, and health care effectiveness in the general population in Taiwan through secondary analysis of health data. In her research program, she employs basic research and randomized controlled trial designs. To facilitate knowledge translation, she also embarks on conducting cohort studies using claims data as well as meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials. Her published papers have been cited by numerous journal articles and several of which received very high citations from journal papers. Outcomes of her meta-analyses of treatment efficacy for symptom management of chronic illness have been instrumental to knowledge translation and evidence-based practice in Taiwan and worldwide. Of note, her works in insomnia, biofeedback, and relaxation therapies have been included in published meta-analyses and textbooks, and frequently selected as the featured articles of top nursing journals.