Priscilla K. Gazarian PhD, RN
Associate Professor
School of Nursing and Health Sciences
University of Massachusetts Boston
Nurse Scientist
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Dr. Gazarian earned her Ph.D. in Nursing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2008. She has over 30 years of experience in the care of hospitalized adults.
She has experience as a Co-I on the PROSPECT Study (Promoting Respect and Ongoing Safety through Patient-centeredness, Engagement, Communication and Technology) funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. As a Co-I with the PROSPECT study, Dr. Gazarian successfully implemented a patient centered care intervention to improve patient engagement, led a qualitative study exploring how patients and their care-partners define, describe, and experience dignity and respect during hospitalization and was the site PI for a Multicenter survey examining barriers to providing quality end of life care in the ICU.
She has served as the Nursing Program Director for STRIDE (Strategies to Reduce Injuries and Develop Confidence in Elders). In this role, she led nurse falls care managers in implementing a falls prevention intervention as part of a multisite pragmatic trial funded by PCORI. She is a Co-I on a STRIDE ancillary study funded by the Boston Roybal Center exploring the use of motivational interviewing by nurses for falls prevention among older adults.
She has been the PI on two studies exploring Nurse Decision Making in preventing adverse events.
Dr. Gazarian’s program of research is focused on preventable hospital harms, and the role of patient engagement, patient self-management, and nurse decision making. She is interested in how the patient experiences hospitalization and serious illness, including loss of dignity and respect as a preventable harm and goals of care conversations. She is an expert in the use of cognitive task analysis and the critical decision method as ways to understand the cognitive requirements of clinical work. Her population of interest is adults and elders in acute and critical care environments. Her research is conducted at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital where she holds an appointment as a Nurse Scientist.
