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CHOPR Meet Our Alumni

Featured Alumni

Lynda Flynn, PhD, RN

Completing her postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, Dr. Lynda Flynn is now Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Education in the College of Nursing at Rutgers University. Her program of funded research, which was among the first to extend nursing outcomes research into non-acute settings, focuses on the effects of nursing systems and practice environment on patient outcomes across health care delivery systems including home health, nursing homes, outpatient dialysis centers, and hospitals. Her research has been cited as evidence for practice standards and as the evidence base for changes in federal healthcare regulations. Due to the policy implications of her work she received the 2008 New Jersey Governor’s Merit Award for excellence in research and was inducted as a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing in 2009. Dr. Flynn has published her research findings in many scientific journals, is co-editor of the textbook “Nursing Policy Research: Turning Evidence-Based Research into Health Policy” and serves on peer review panels for the Journal of Nursing Scholarship, Western Journal of Nursing Research, and other journals.

Sean Clarke, PhD, CRNP, FAAN

 

After completing his doctoral degree in nursing from McGill University, Dr. Sean Clarke completed his postgraduate clinical and research training at the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the standing faculty at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing in 2001, and became the Associate Director of the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at that time as well. Currently, Dr. Clarke holds the RBC Chair in Cardiovascular Nursing Research at the University of Toronto and the University Health Network in Toronto. In the fall of 2010, he became Deputy Director for the University of Toronto site of the Nursing Health Services Research Unit funded by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. Dr. Clarke's research deals primarily with organizational aspects of acute care nursing (with a particular emphasis on staffing levels, work environment factors, patient outcomes and nurse occupational health) and nurse workforce issues. He has authored or co-authored over 80 articles, 15 book chapters and co-edited a volume on medication safety for nurses. A fellow of the American Academy of Nursing, he holds an adjunct appointment at the Université de Montréal and visiting appointments at University College Dublin and the University of Hong Kong.

• Meyer, R. M., & Clarke, S. P. (2011). Shifts with nurse understaffing and high patient churn linked to heightened inpatient mortality risk in a single site study. Commentary on: Needleman, J., Buerhaus, P., Pankratz, V.S., Leibson, C.L., Stevens, S.R., & Harris, M. (2011). Nurse staffing and inpatient hospital mortality. New England Journal of Medicine 64: 1037-1045. Evidence Based Nursing. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1136/ebn.2011.100052:
• Aiken, L.H., Sloane, D.M., Clarke, S.P., Poghosyan, L., Cho, E., You, L., Finlayson, M., Kanai-Pak, M., Aungsuroch, Y. (2011). Importance of work environments on hospital outcomes in 9 countries. International Journal of Quality in Health Care 23:357-64.
• Moreno-Casbas, T., Funtelsaz-Gallego, C., Gil de Miguel, A., González-María, E., Clarke, S.P. (2011). Spanish nurses' attitudes towards research and perceived barriers and facilitators of research utilization: A comparative survey of nurses with and without experience as principal investigators. Journal of Clinical Nursing 20:1936-1947.
• Doran, D., Mildon, B., Clarke, S. (2011). Towards a national report card in nursing: A knowledge synthesis. Nursing Leadership 24: 38-57.

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Dr. Christopher Friese received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005, during which time he was a fellow in the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research. After graduation he completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard University, where his research focused on measurement and improvement of quality of care for patients with cancer. Currently, Dr. Friese serves as Assistant Professor in the Division of Nursing Business & Health Systems at the University of Michigan School of Nursing. In 2008, he was awarded a Pathway to Independence K99/R00 research grant to study outcomes of care for patients with cancer from the National Institute of Nursing Research. His research has been published in Medical Care, Cancer, Health Services Research, Nursing Research, and has been presented at national and international meetings. He was one of the original authors of the Oncology Nursing Society’s Putting Evidence into Practice (PEP) summaries of evidence-based interventions to prevent infection. Dr. Friese holds advanced certification as an oncology nurse, and continues to practice clinically as a staff nurse in medical oncology, hematological malignancies, and stem cell transplantation. 

Selected Publications:

• Friese, C.R., Himes-Ferris, L., Frasier, M.N., McCullagh, M.C., Griggs, J.J. (2011). Structures and processes of care in ambulatory oncology settings and nurse-reported exposure to chemotherapy. BMJ Qual Saf.
• Kalisch, B.J., Friese, C.R., Choi S.H., Rochman, M. (2011). Hospital nurse staffing: choice of measure matters. Med Care, 8, 775-9.
• Kalisch, B.J., Tschannen, D., Lee. H., Friese, C.R.  (2011). Hospital variation in missed nursing care. Am J Med Qual 4, 291-9.
• Friese, C.R., Earle, C.C., Magazu, L.S., Brown, J.R., Neville, B.A., Hevelone, N.D., Richardson, L.C., Abel, G.A. (2011). Timeliness and quality of diagnostic care for medicare recipients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Cancer 7, 1470-7.

Dr. Lesly Kelly joined the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research in 2009 as a post-doctoral fellow after graduating from the University of Arizona. While at CHOPR, Dr. Kelly worked on several projects and manuscripts analyzing nurse outcomes, the impact of California nurse staffing legislation, and the effect of Magnet hospitals on patient outcomes.  Dr. Kelly's research interests include the role of nursing in patient outcomes in acute care, nursing workforce issues, and the influence of system and technology  on nursing and patient outcomes. Dr. Kelly is currently an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University and Clinical Research Program Director at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona. She serves as the principle investigator of  the Margretta M. Styles Scholar/American Nurse Foundation grant funded research project entitled, "Are Patient Outcomes Better in Magnet Hospitals?" Other honors and awards include receipt of the 2010 Arizona Nurses Association Graduate Recognition Award, the 2008 Arizona Nurses Foundation Award, and the 2005 Mary F. Jefferies Achievement Award.

Dr. Jingjing Shang (BSN Peking Union Medical College, Beijing China, 1996; MSN University of Delaware, 2001; PhD Johns Hopkins University, 2009) completed her post-doctoral fellowship in the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research in 2011. Her research focuses on cancer patient outcome research and nursing workforce. Her Doctoral Dissertation titled, "Exercise Adherence and Contamination in a RCT among Patients Receiving Active Cancer Treatment" examined issues surrounding exercise adherence and contamination among cancer patients in a randomized controlled clinical trial.  Dr. Shang is currently an Assistant Professor at the Columbia University School of Nursing, where she teaches a master level research class. She is an Oncology Certified Nurse and her other research interests include symptom management and exercise adherence among cancer patients. Accomplishments while at CHOPR include an ANF grant, several manuscripts, and national presentations on the nursing workforce.

Heather Tubbs Cooley PhD, RN

 

Dr. Tubbs Cooley received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010, where she studied in the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research.  Dr. Tubbs Cooley is currently completing a fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, where she is a Nurse Scientist, Quality Scholar, and Assistant Professor of Clinical Nursing at the University of Cincinnati. Her research focuses on relationships between the delivery of inpatient care and patient, nurse, and systems outcomes. She is the Cincinnati Children's site principal investigator for the STAR-2 Network Study through the Improvement Science Research Network.  Dr. Tubbs Cooley received a Dissertation Award from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in 2010 for her doctoral research examining the impact of nurses’ working conditions on length of stay and readmission for hospitalized children. In 2011, she received the New Investigator Award from the AcademyHealth Interdisciplinary Research Group on Nursing Issues.

 

Selected Publications:

• Tubbs Cooley, H., Santucci, G., Kang, T.I., Feinstein, J.A., Hexam, K.R., & Feudtner, C.  Pediatric nurses’ individual and group assessments of palliative, end-of-life, and bereavement care. Journal of Palliative Medicine. 2011; 14(5): 631-637.
• Tubbs Cooley, H., Aiken, L.H., Cimiotti, J., Silber, J.H., & Sloane, D.M. Nurses’ working conditions and hospital readmission among pediatric surgical patients.  (In progress)

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