TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Susan Fisher of Cartersville, Ga., a clinical psychology doctoral student at The University of Alabama, has received the Psychologists in Long Term Care (PLTC) Student Research Award.

Fisher was recognized for a project that focused on nursing home pain assessment. The project evaluated the relationship between pain assessments completed by certified nursing assistants and pain assessments completed by nursing homes to meet Medicaid regulatory guidelines.

Her project was the first of its kind to explore relationships between the certified nursing assistants and the nursing home-based pain reports completed by typical nursing home staff. The information gathered was also published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society in 2002.

Fisher has been working with Dr. Louis Burgio, UA distinguished research professor and director of the UA Center for Mental Health and Aging, since 1999 in her specialty area of geropsychology. Their work concerns improving pain assessment in long-term care facilities by designing objective procedures for obtaining self-report from dementia residents and by training certified nursing assistants on identification of behavioral pain cues.

“I’m proud and excited that UA’s graduate psychology program and the Center for Mental Health and Aging are getting national recognition considering that our Center is quite young and considering that we are only one of a few clinical psychology programs in the country with a well-defined aging emphasis,” said Fisher.

PLTC is a network of psychologists that seek to provide high quality mental health services in long-term care settings. The award is given to graduate and post-doctoral students who submit a project relevant to long-term care and geropsychology.

The award, a commemorative piece and $300 will be presented to Fisher in November 2005 at the Gerontological Society of America Annual Research Meeting in Washington, D.C.