Last modified: Thursday, March 30, 2006
Marion E. Broome
Distinguished Professor
University Dean
School of Nursing
University Graduate School
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Appointed to IU faculty, 2004
B.S.N., Medical College of Georgia, 1973
M.N., University of South Carolina, 1977
Ph.D., University of Georgia, 1984
Prior to 1978, the understanding of pain in infants and children was so limited that no pain medication was prescribed to children post-surgery. Marion Broome has made it her life's work to understand and reduce children's pain.
"What Dr. Broome contributed, beginning in the 1980s, is the development of effective adjunct interventions that encouraged parents and health care professionals to use cognitive-behavioral strategies in managing children's distress," says Angela Barron McBride, distinguished professor and dean emerita of IUPUI's School of Nursing. "She is a scientist strongly committed to the development of future generations, which is very much in keeping with the essential mission of Indiana University."
In addition to her appointment as University Dean and professor at the School of Nursing, Broome is associate vice president for academic affairs with Clarian Health Partners and is an affiliate faculty member with the Indiana University Center for Bioethics. Broome previously held and had held professorships and associate dean positions at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Rush University, and Medical College of Georgia. Over the span of her career, Broome's research, writings, and programs have helped health professionals worldwide to make great strides in the management of children's pain.
Broome wrote an article for Critical Care Quarterly in 1985 that outlined a model for assessment of and intervention with children's pain, setting the stage for two decades of research in which she studied the experience of critically ill children. She developed a self-care framework for families in which a child is struggling with chronic illness such as cystic fibrosis, cancer, or sickle cell anemia. Her Child Medical Fear Scale (CMFS) has been translated into four languages and used in nearly a dozen published studies.
"To Tame the Hurt," the video and audiotape she created, teaches children and parents how to use relaxation and distraction techniques to overcome pain and is being used in more than 400 hospitals, health care agencies, and educational institutions around the world. Broome also created a Web site, www.emlaus.com/questions, that posts answers to parents' questions about pediatric pain.
"There are no objective metrics I can use to describe the worldwide impact of Dr. Broome's work," says Linda S. Franck, professor and chair of Children's Nursing Research at the Institute of Child Health at University College, London. "I can only share my personal experiences traveling to many parts of the world, visiting academic and clinical settings, and seeing direct evidence of her influence — seeing her books and chapters in use, seeing pain assessment and management policies with her studies cited as the main references, and observing the care of children change over time, influenced by the dissemination of her findings and reviews."
Broome's articles and editorials have appeared in numerous publications including Pain, Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, Critical Care Quarterly, Nursing Research, Journal of Child and Family Nursing, Nursing Outlook (of which she is the current editor), and Journal of Pediatric Nursing, among many others. She has received many awards for excellence in nursing and teaching, including a Distinguished Researcher Award from the Southern Nursing Research Society in 2005. She was named a fellow in the Nurse Executive Leadership Program (at the Association for Colleges of Nursing) from 2002 to 2003, and was inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 1994.
"Her research has been instrumental in the revolution that has occurred in children's pain management — from a time in which there was essentially no attention paid to pain, to the present where it is considered in essentially all clinical encounters," says Neil L. Schechter, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and director of the pain relief program at Connecticut Children's Medical Center.
In an era in which the ethical considerations of research involving children are prominent, says Cynda Hylton Rushton, associate professor of Nursing at Johns Hopkins University's Berman Bioethics Institute, "Dr. Broome's visionary leadership has stimulated changes in research and clinical practice . . . her commitment to quality, integrity, and accountability are exemplary."
