Eun-Shim Nahm, PhD, RN, FAAN, FGSA
Professor, Department of Organizational Systems and Adult Health
Associate Dean, PhD Program
University of Maryland School of Nursing
Eun-Shim Nahm is internationally recognized as a leader in nursing informatics education, research, and practice. She has made significant contributions as a teacher and mentor, overseeing the development of more than 1,000 nurse informaticians and ensuring the preparation of informatics nurses for leadership in academic and clinical settings.
Dr. Nahm also serves as co-director of the Postdoctoral Research Training Program and associate director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore Institute for Clinical & Translational Research’s Informatics Core.
Previously, she served the University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON) as director of the Nursing Informatics Program in the master’s degree program from 2010 to 2022 and co-director of the Biology and Behavior Across the Life Span Organized Research Center from 2012 to 2022.
After earning her PhD from UMSON in 2003, Nahm joined the faculty as an assistant professor and was promoted to associate professor in 2007 and professor in 2013.
Nahm’s work in nursing informatics has advanced the field by addressing the needs of older adults managing chronic illnesses. She specializes in using digital health technologies such as secure online patient portals to help older patients engage in their health management. These technologies enable communication with health care providers and access to lab results and medication histories.
She has developed and tested the feasibility of an online training program to support patient portal use among older adults, thought to be the first nationwide. This program involved 272 participants with chronic conditions such as heart diseases, diabetes, and cancer. Through easy-to-follow instructions, video demonstrations, and moderated discussion boards, Nahm’s research assessed the impact of a theory-based patient portal e-learning program on participants’ knowledge, health decision-making, communication with providers, and medication management.
Her research has focused on promoting care coordination and patient-centered care across Maryland hospitals, including a pilot study testing the impact of a digital cancer survivorship patient engagement toolkit on older cancer survivors’ health outcomes. Nahm currently is leading a study to develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of an instrument designed to assess nurses’ competencies in using health data and artificial intelligence-supported tools in clinical settings.
Nahm’s research has been published widely in over 90 peer-reviewed articles.
She has driven innovation in the informatics curriculum at UMSON, launching an educational focus area for the RN-to-BSN program to prepare graduates with advanced knowledge and skills in care coordination supported by health information technology, the first such focus area in the nation.
Nahm secured a planning grant under the Maryland Higher Education Commission Nurse Support Program II to develop and implement a graduate-level Real-World Data and Pragmatic Research certificate program to prepare new generations of nurse scientists to address health care system challenges.
Nahm was inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 2009 and the Gerontological Society of America in 2016. She received the University of Maryland Medical System’s University of Maryland School of Nursing Colleague Award in 2021 and the Southern Nursing Research Society’s Jean Wood Nursing Scholarship Award, recognizing the contributions of a researcher who has enhanced the science and practice of nursing, in 2022.
