Patient care transitions expert Gerri Lamb to speak at UB

For almost 30 years, Gerri Lamb has spent her career improving the ways different parts of the health care system work together.

Lamb, a renowned patient care coordination expert at Arizona State University, will explore how nurses can improve the transition of patients and information when she delivers the keynote speech for the School of Nursing’s sixth annual Margaret A. Nelson Lecture.

The lecture, “Care Coordination in Nursing Practice,” will take place from 3-4 p.m. April 8 in 105 Harriman Hall, South Campus.

Lamb’s discussion will follow the nursing school’s 2016 Research Day, a showcase of nursing and health care research by faculty, students and community partners. This year’s theme is “Care Coordination and Transitional Care to Reduce Readmissions.”

Research Day begins at 9 a.m. and is free and open to the public. A dessert reception will conclude the day at 4 p.m.

“Nursing research is at the core of advancing health care,” says Marsha Lewis, professor and dean of the School of Nursing.

“An annual event at our school, Research Day is an opportunity for faculty, students and our community health care partners to share the impact of their research and forge collaborative partnerships. We are honored to host our keynote speaker, Dr. Gerri Lamb, a nurse scientist whose work focuses on improving care coordination for vulnerable patients in the community.”

Lamb has practiced patient care coordination for more than two decades. But her passion for the field developed when she was thrust into a caregiver role for her mother, encountering the headaches of setting up home care while living states apart.

“Trying to make the system work for my mom made the importance of care coordination real to me in a new way,” says Lamb.

Now an associate professor and director of the Center for Advancing Interprofessional Practice, Education and Research at the Arizona State University College of Nursing and Health Innovation, Lamb centers her research on nursing care delivery and patient outcomes.

“Care coordination is pivotal to achieving our national quality and cost goals for health care,” she says. 

“When you think about the major outcomes we are all focusing on, like improving the patient and family experience or reducing unnecessary returns to the hospital, it’s all about connecting the dots across providers and services — and that’s care coordination.”

She is known for developing the first tool to measure staff nurse care coordination in hospitals through the Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative, a project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Lamb was the co-investigator of INTERACT (Interventions to Reduce Acute Care Transfers), a program that aims to lower hospital admissions from nursing facilities. She is also editor of “Care Coordination the Game Changer: How Nursing is Revolutionizing Quality Care,” published by the American Nurses Association.

She holds a doctorate in nursing from the University of Arizona and a master’s degree from the University of Rochester.

Margaret A. Nelson, a UB School of Nursing alumna, created the endowed fund to honor her late children, Linda Nelson Buettner and Bruce Nelson, who both died of complications related to diabetes.

The endowment fund was established to invite a visiting scholar to the School of Nursing to commemorate Nelson’s lifelong commitment to the nursing field and educate faculty, students, staff and the community about prevention, early detection and management of diabetes and other chronic illnesses.