Amanda Bettencourt

Amanda Bettencourt, PhD, APRN, CCRN-K, ACCNS-P, serves a one-year term as immediate past president of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) board of directors from July 1, 2023, through June 30, 2024, and co-chair of the AACN – AACN Certification Corporation Nominating Committee. Bettencourt was president of the AACN board from July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023. She was president-elect from July 1, 2021, through June 30, 2022, completed a three-year term as a director from July 1, 2018, through June 30, 2021, and served a one-year term as treasurer from July 1, 2019, through June 30, 2020.

Bettencourt is an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Health at University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. As an educator, researcher and pediatric clinical nurse specialist, her focus is on achieving the best possible outcomes for acutely and critically ill children. Her current research involves evaluating factors influencing the research-to-practice gap in critical care settings and testing implementation strategies targeting the interprofessional team to improve evidence-based care.

Bettencourt was recently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan, where she was appointed to the National Clinician Scholars Program and received advanced training in implementation science. Previously, she was responsible for ensuring high-quality nursing care and optimal outcomes for burn, trauma and pediatric patients as a clinical nurse specialist at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, and at UF Health Shands Children's Hospital in Gainesville, Florida.

Bettencourt's extensive volunteer service with AACN includes board liaison, NTI Program Planning Committee (2021), AACN – AACN Certification Corporation Nominating Committee, (2020-2021), community moderator, online AACN Peer Support Community Development Team (2020) and board liaison, Chapter Advisory Team (2019-2020).

Additional affiliations include the American Burn Association and Sigma. In addition to presenting at the National Teaching Institute & Critical Care Exposition (NTI), she has led sessions at several other conferences, including the American Burn Association's annual meeting. Her publications are in the areas of implementation science, nursing and patient safety, nurse staffing and work environments, burn critical care and pediatric delirium.

Bettencourt earned a Bachelor of Science in exercise science from the University of Florida, an accelerated Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a Master of Science in Nursing from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. She earned a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Science in health care research at the University of Michigan.