Biography

Dr Rita Collins is the Director of Nurse Education at Hibernia College. Under her leadership, the nursing team have developed the BSc (Hons) in General Nursing programme through to QQI academic validation and NMBI accreditation.

Rita has extensive experience at third level in the areas of management of education, teaching and curriculum development within the nursing discipline. She qualified as a nurse in St Vincent’s University Hospital in the 1970s and continued her education with a Bachelor in Nursing Studies (Hons) (UCD), a Diploma in Computers in Education (TCD), an MEd (UCD) and a PhD in Information Studies (UCD). Her PhD focused on the information behaviour of nurses when documenting nursing care.

She was a lecturer for 22 years in the School of Nursing, Midwifery & Health Systems in UCD before joining Hibernia College. Throughout her time in UCD, Rita was the Programme Director for the nurse tutor course, from its inception as a Bachelor of Nursing Studies to a strand of the MSc in Nursing. She has also been involved in many European projects. Rita spent four years as the External Examiner for the top-up BSc in Nursing at the University of Sheffield.

Rita has undertaken research on various topics. She has numerous published articles and has presented at a variety of national and international conferences. She has been an invited speaker at conferences in Seville, Spain; Arad, Romania; and Nancy, France. Her current research interest lies in the field of curriculum evaluation.