Clinical Assistant Professor
- University of San Diego - PhD
- St. Louis University - MSN
- Rhode Island College - BSN
Dr. Kathy Klimpel is a Clinical Associate Professor at the University of San Diego, Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science and Beyster Institute for Nursing Research. She teaches in the Health Care Informatics, Nursing Informatics and DNP programs and serves as both capstone and DNP advisor in those programs.
Dr. Klimpel is a member of American Nursing Informatics Association (ANIA) and has served on the San Diego Regional Chapter Board for the last four years and is currently the Chapter President. She is also a member of American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and is an AMIA Certified Health Informatics Professional (ACHIP) Diplomat.
Professional Experience
Dr. Klimpel has spent her time in healthcare striving and leading teams to optimize the care provided to children primarily those critically ill. She has had positions that include bedside pediatric ICU care, clinical nurse specialist roles, leadership roles and research coordinator roles in multiple institutions across the country including Children’s Hospital in St. Louis, the National Institutes of Health’s Clinical Center, the University of Maryland in Baltimore, and currently Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego. Those experiences were invaluable as she took on the new role as an informaticist. Since focusing on informatics, Dr. Klimpel has been a leader during implementations of two electronic health records (EHR), Meditech and Epic and became certified in two Epic applications.
Scholarly Work
Dr. Klimpel received her BSN from Rhode Island College, an MSN as a Clinical Nurse Specialist from St. Louis University and her PhD from the University of San Diego, Hahn School of Nursing and Health Science. For her dissertation, she investigated “The Use of Clinical Decision Support to Improve Nursing Practice”. Her research interests include how the use of electronic health records (EHR) and technology, specifically the use of clinical decision support, can positively impact nursing practice and patient outcomes. She has recently presented her work in decreasing the amount of intrusive alerts to nurses within the EHR at ANIA's 2023 national conference.