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School of Health Research

Faculty Scholars

Lucia Gonzales

Lucia Gonzales, Ph.D., MSN, FNP-C, AGPCNP-BC

Associate Director of Research
School of Nursing 
College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences
luciag@clemson.edu

About

Lucia Gonzales is the Associate Director of Research at Clemson School of Nursing. She has more than ten years of experience as a director of education and more than ten years as a chief nursing administrator in acute care health systems. Her prior research funding included grants of $420,000 for care coordination and nurses' computer education. She developed an onsite RN to BSN program in collaboration with UMDNJ/Rowan School of Nursing for 93 nurses. At the baccalaureate level, she taught leadership, professional nursing, contemporary issues, organizational transitions, and logic and critical thinking at Clayton State College & University. At the graduate level, Gonzales has taught leadership/professional issues and health theory at Emory and Kennesaw State Universities and research at Thomas Jefferson University. At the University of San Diego, she was a tenured associate professor of nursing, leading the geriatrics nurse practitioner program, teaching geriatrics and health care finance in the Doctor of Nursing Practice program. In the prelicensure graduate clinical nurse leader program, Gonzales taught theory courses of evidence-based practice research, med surg nursing I and II and simulation courses of health assessment and med surg. At Clemson University School of Nursing, she inspires faculty and bedside clinician research. She is a co-author of 18 grants, more than $2,800,000, engaging 149 researchers in collaboration with Prisma Health. Gonzales maintains a nursing practice as a transition planner for the midlife woman, nurse practitioner, and joins her husband in a Christian healing ministry presence in the Philippines.

Visit Dr. Gonzales' Faculty Profile.

How their research is transforming health care

Gonzales’ background in nursing transforms healthcare internationally by focusing upon clinical cultural competence and cardiovascular illness recovery. She is an invited international speaker. She prepared three research Instruments for global use--translated into six languages including psychometric analysis.  She transforms advance practice provider palliative care practice with funded research in Appalachian SC. Gonzales’ hospice clinical experience led her to explore the palliative care research topics of constipation symptoms in patients with opioid prescriptions and culturally sensitive completion of advance directives in the elderly. Gonzales has transformed both nursing academic and clinical practice with her investigations into students’ learning styles. Her publications encourage faculty and clinical nurses to interject research into both the academic and clinical settings.

Health Research Expertise Keywords

Faculty Scholar, Clinical cultural competence; cardiovascular illness recovery; opioid-induced constipation; advanced directives completion in the elderly; students’ learning styles; interjecting research into the academic and clinical settings.

College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences
College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences | 116 Edwards Hall