Our Faculty and Staff
We work as an interdisciplinary team, meaning we bring different types of expertise to your care to not only treat the physical symptoms of living with serious illness, but also the emotional, spiritual, and psychosocial stresses. We see patients in the hospital at both University and Memorial hospitals, and in an outpatient clinic on the University campus. Our outpatient clinic also offers telehealth appointments.
Jennifer Reidy, MD
Division Chief
Clinical/Research Focus:
- Communication in health care
- Health equity and humanism
- Complex cancer pain management
- Community-based palliative care
- Quality improvement
Vandana Nagpal, MD
Associate Division Chief
Clinical/Research Focus:
- Serious illness communication
- Quality Improvement
- Humanism in Medicine
- Education
- Healthcare provider wellness
Adam Bliss, NP
Clinical/Research Focus:
- Palliative care and hospice
- Community medicine
- Homeless outreach
- Dementia
- Dysphagia & role of artificial nutrition
- Quality and safety
Ariel Brugger, PA
Clinical/Research Focus:
- Facilitating difficult conversations
- Teaching communications skills and medical education
Deborah Horgan
Palliative Care Administrator
Rebecca Kowaloff, DO
Clinical/Research Focus:
- Prognostication and communicating prognosis
- Teaching communication skills in serious illness
- Palliative care medical education
- Frailty syndrome and perioperative risk assessment
- Narrative medicine
Pamela Lane, NP
Clinical/Research Focus:
- Effective symptom management with a special interest in pain management and exploring non-pharmacologic pain management
- Patient and family education and support
Sara Lyon, RN
Outpatient Nurse Navigator
Clinical/Research Focus:
- Patient education
- Patient safety
- Medical ethics
- Medical journalism
Mary-Carla MacDonald, MA, MT-BC, FAMI
Clinical/Research Focus:
- Cultural Humility and Trauma informed care
- Interdisciplinary practices in Medicine
- Living and dying with dignity, agency, and social emotional well-being
- Humanism and the dignity of Joy while living with serious illness
- Role of music in Symptom management, Disorders of Consciousness, Altered Mental status, and Neurologic Rehabilitation
- Communication, Relationship, and patient/family voice in healthcare
Nancy McCool, LICSW
Lead SW
Clinical/Research Focus:
- Self-care for healthcare workers
- Effects of healthcare workers “casual” language on our patients
- Using trauma informed care when interacting with patients and advocating for patients and families during family meetings
- Researching the effects of unprocessed grief on healthcare worker's ability to care for themselves and patients
Nancy published an article in September of 2022 in the Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life and Palliative Care on the effects of a buddy system on mitigating distress and promoting resilience on a palliative care team. She received a grant to teach primary palliative care skills to hospital social workers using the Serious Illness Conversation Guide.
Carolyn Murphy, MD
Clinical/Research Focus:
- Medical education
- Pain management
- Communication in healthcare
Sunita Puri, MD
Fellowship Director
Clinical/Research Focus:
- Medical education
- Developing palliative care educational curricula for surgeons, intensivists and cardiologists
- The centrality of language in goals of care meetings
- Bioethics consultation
- Complex symptom management
- Teaching medical memoir and nonfiction
- Narrative medicine
Shawna Steadman, NP
Lead APP
Clinical/Research Focus:
- Communication in healthcare
- Patient and family education
- Quality improvement
Janet Tyndall, LICSW
Clinical/Research Focus:
- Family support and education to help families understand the issues and situation so they can make decisions based on the patient’s values and wishes
- Guardianship and health care proxies