Heather Tubbs Cooley, PhD, RN, FAAN

Alumni Designation

PhD ’10

Dr. Heather Tubbs Cooley received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010, during which time she was a pre-doctoral fellow in the Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship in delivery system science at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in 2013. Currently, Dr. Tubbs Cooley is an Associate Professor and Nurse Scientist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and an affiliated faculty member at the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing.

Dr. Tubbs Cooley’s research program is focused evaluating outcomes of pediatric nursing services, including home health visits and delivery of inpatient nursing care. She conducts her research in collaboration with a multi-disciplinary team of clinicians, scientists, and healthcare operations staff with expertise in clinical and health services research, patient safety, human factors and ergonomics, and informatics. Her research has been supported by national funding agencies including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Institutes of Health and she is a collaborator and co-investigator on several additional projects funded by the NIH, the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and Cincinnati Children’s. Dr. Tubbs Cooley has received numerous awards for her research including the New Investigator Award from the AcademyHealth Interdisciplinary Research Group on Nursing Issues (2011) and the Brilliant New Investigator Award from the Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science (2014).

Selected Publications:

Tubbs-Cooley HL, Pickler RH, Mara CA, Othman M, Kovacs A, Mark B. Hospital Magnet® designation and missed nursing care in neonatal intensive care units. J Ped Nurs 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pedn.2016.12.004

Tubbs-Cooley HL, Pickler RH, Simmons JM, Auger KA, Beck AF, Sauers-Ford HS, Solan LG, White CM, Sherman SN, Statile AM, Shah SS on behalf of the H2O Study Team. Testing a post-discharge nurse-led transitional home visit in acute care pediatrics: The hospital-to-home outcomes (H2O) study protocol. J Adv Nurs Epub 2016 Jan 28.  doi: 10.1111/jan.12882

Tubbs-Cooley HL, Pickler RH, Younger JB, Mark BA. A descriptive study of nurse-reported missed care in neonatal intensive care units. J Adv Nurs. 2015 Apr;71(4):813-24. doi: 10.1111/jan.12578. Epub 2014 Nov 27. PMID:25430513

Tubbs-Cooley HL, Pickler RH, Meinzen-Derr J. Missed oral feeding opportunities and preterm infants’ time to achieve full oral feedings and neonatal intensive care unit discharge. Am J Perinatol. 2015 Jan;32(1):1-8. doi: 10.1055/s-0034-1372426. Epub 2014 Mar 28.PMID:24683073

Tubbs-Cooley HL, Cimiotti JP, Silber JH, Sloane DM, Aiken LH. An observational study of nurse staffing levels and readmission among children hospitalized for common conditions. BMJ Qual Saf. 2013 Sep;22(9):735-42. doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2012-001610. Epub 2013 May 7.PMID:23657609