Verónica García Walker

Dr. García Walker’s experience with older adults diagnosed with schizophrenia (OADWS) spans over 20 years. She has dedicated herself to the patient care and patient teaching of OADWS as a staff psychiatric nurse as well as when she served as a director of nursing in a psychiatric hospital. Later at The University of Texas at Austin, she tirelessly worked in both her undergraduate and graduate lectures and clinical classes to eradicate or mitigate the stigma commonly associated with this population. For over a decade, she has assisted countless students’ learning of safe, respectful, appropriate communication techniques for communicating with OADWS in many major psychiatric facilities. Recently, she investigated the literature and contributed to a conceptual model using the holistic lens of life course theory to study OADWS (Walker, 2019). Dr. García Walker has stated the following, “My passion and love for this population cannot be measured as easily but should be taken into account when considering my suitability for research on this important topic.”