Dr. Tanner is Professor Emerita at the Oregon Health & Science University School of Nursing and a national leader in nursing education innovation and scholarship. Dr. Tanner served as Editor for the Journal of Nursing Education from 1991–2012. Her program of research has focused on the development of expertise in clinical judgment and the impact of different education models on the development of skill in clinical judgment.
For the last decade, Dr. Tanner was involved in creating educational solutions to the nursing shortage, including ways to increase enrollment and advance academic progression through multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary collaboration. She and colleagues led the development, implementation, and evaluation of The Oregon Consortium for Nursing Education (OCNE), which launched in 2003 as a partnership among OHSU and several community colleges. Among OCNE innovations were a new competency-based baccalaureate curriculum offered on all 14 campuses of the consortium and the development and testing of a new model of clinical education well-suited to a competency-based program.
Dr. Tanner received her PhD in Educational Psychology from the University of Colorado and did post-doctoral study at University of California, San Francisco. She holds an MS in Medical-Surgical Nursing from the University of California, San Francisco and a BSN from the University of Northern Colorado. Dr. Tanner is the recipient of numerous honors, including the American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award for Expertise in Nursing Practice: Caring, Clinical Judgment and Ethics, the Graduate Faculty Award from OHSU School of Nursing, the National League for Nursing Award for Excellence in Nursing Education Research, and the Oregon Medical Research Foundation Mentor Award.