Kathleen O'Connell PhD, RN, FAAN

Kathleen O'Connell has been conducting research on smoking cessation and other health behaviors for over thirty years. Her work has primarily involved application of psychological theories to understand health behaviors. Several years ago, she used a model of Pavlovian extinction to explain how people resist urges to smoke during smoking cessation. More recently, she has become interested in urges to urinate, especially urinary urgency and urgency incontinence. Her presentation will contain her findings on stimuli people associate with urinary leakage and urgency. Along with her coauthors she has an article in press in the Journal of Wound Ostomy and Continence Nursing reporting a pilot study on this topic.