Tatiana Sadak, Ph.D., P.M.H.N.P., R.N.

Dr. Sadak is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington School of Nursing.  She is a certified psychiatric nurse practitioner and a dementia patient advocate. Tatiana’s pre-post-doctoral studies were supported by the National Hartford Centers of Gerontological Nursing Excellence. Dr. Sadak’s research and scholarship activities are anchored in her extensive clinical expertise in memory disorders. Her focus is on promoting dementia caregiver activation that she defines as the process by which caregivers become ready and then progressively assume the multiple roles involved in managing the needs of a loved one with dementia while caring for themselves.  Her goal is to equip clinicians with strategies to foster and sustain an ongoing partnership with dementia patient/caregiver dyads, to assess and to cultivate caregivers’ capacity for comprehensive home management of the dementia patient’s health. She is developing a model of dementia caregiver activation and the index for measuring activation levels. This model will serve as an organizing framework for designing and testing tailored patient/caregiver centered interventions for improving caregiver activation. Dr. Sadak teaches psychiatric nursing courses and geropsychiatric specialty curricula to graduate and undergraduate students. She is a chapter co-chair and a policy workgroup member at the Association of Advanced Practice Psychiatric Nurses.