Spotlight On... Professor Li-Chan Lin

Professor Li-Chan Lin, a Visiting Leverhulme Professor from National Ying-Ming University, Taiwan delivered a Leverhulme lecture entitled 'Traditional Chinese Medicine: putting it to the test' at The University of Sheffield on 4 February 2009.

The event, which was chaired by Keith Burnett CBE, Vice-Chancellor of The University of Sheffield was well attended by university colleagues and lay people interested in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

Professor Lin explained the cultural and philosophical roots of TCM and introduced her own research into acupressure which she tested using randomised clinical trial methods on a wide variety of disorders including nausea and agitation. The message was that acupressure seems to work, although the mechanisms are still poorly understood.

Professor Lin is in gerontological nursing with a main research interest focusing on the care of institutionalized residents. Her long-term research goal of institutionalized resident care is centred on the improvement in the quality of care in long-term care facilities. To achieve this goal, she has, during the last 16 years, investigated the factors that influence the morale of older people and then engaged in various independent nursing interventions in long-term care facilities in Taiwan. These investigations have included:

• training in swallowing for stroke patients,
• pain management for care home residents with cognitive impairment,
• intervention-reduced agitated behaviour in demented elders,
• management of eating difficulties for elders with dementia.

From 1997 to 2000 she was the director of the Institute of Clinical Nursing at the National Yang-Ming University. She was president of the Taiwan Long-Term Care Professional Association between Z005 and 2008. She is an editorial board member of the Journal of Clinical Nursing, and a peer reviewer for the BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Public Health Nursing, Journal of Advanced Nursing, Journal of Clinical Nursing and the Western Journal of Nursing Research