Faculty - Nai-Ching (Allison) Chi

Dr. Nai-Ching Chi is an assistant professor in the College of Nursing at the University of Iowa. Her research focuses on identifying challenges of family caregiving in hospice care and integrating health informatics and evidence-based interventions to enhance the quality of end-of-life care. She explores the challenges of pain management faced by family caregivers in hospice care and develops an educational tool for healthcare providers to support pain management. She translates the educational tool to an interactive website to support home hospice care.

Additionally, Dr. Chi is interested in examining the effects of healthy aging technologies and smart home devices for older adults. Her Master’s project was to examine a digital pet companion application and explored older adults’ perspectives about health technologies in order to provide recommendations to future designs of elder-friendly wellness technologies.

Dr. Chi has co-authored 13 peer-reviewed papers and participated in a variety of research projects and conferences with a gerontological and technological focus including Gerontological Society of America and American Medical Informatics Association. Her research work was awarded with several scholarships from Washington State King County Nurses Association, Sigma Theta Tau International-Psi-at-Large Chapter, Taiwan Ministry of Education, UW Retirement Association Scholarship in Aging, and UW Top Scholar Award. She was selected as one of the four outstanding graduates to represent the graduate school at the University of Washington Commencement (www.washington.edu/graduation/gonfalonieres).