BANGOR – Alfreda Mouland, geriatric nurse practitioner at Acadia Hospital and one of the first nurse practitioners in the state of Maine, has devoted herself to the health needs of Maine’s vulnerable older adults with chronic mental illness since 1978.

Her devotion and skill has earned her the Maine Nurse Practitioner of the Year Award from the Maine Nurse Practitioner Association.

For 17 years, Mouland developed clinical programs and provided advanced practice nursing care for older adults in the Program on Aging, a unique program in Maine at Bangor Mental Health Institute, currently Dorothea Dix Center.

In 1995, she was recruited by leaders of The Acadia Hospital to provide medical services for older patients in the newly opened psychiatric hospital.

In her tenure at The Acadia Hospital, Mouland has promoted the role of nurse practitioners in attending the unmet health needs of those with mental illness and-or substance abuse.

She has mentored several newly graduated nurse practitioners who are now valuable staff members.

In addition, she serves as preceptor for many nurse practitioner graduate students from the University of Maine and Husson College Schools of Nursing.

This is done with generosity of spirit and a professional ethic to prepare the next generation of nurse practitioners for skillful care of vulnerable older adults, according to hospital officials.

In addition to her devotion to clinical excellence, Mouland has left her mark on the status of advanced practice nursing in Maine through her early contribution in crafting landmark legislation which, in 1995, passed into Maine law as LD 948: An Act to Provide Greater Access to Health Care. The law serves as model legislation for nurses in other states as they try to remove restrictive barriers to practice.