Research

 

As a nurse scientist with a focus in symptom science and person-centered care, I am seeking to better understand symptom experiences to aid the assessment, prevention, and treatment of symptoms to improve the quality of life and well-being of people with chronic disease. I am presently finishing my PhD in Nursing at Duke University (my defense is March 22nd, 2021), and I expect to graduate in May of 2021.

 

For my dissertation, “Phenotyping Complex Symptoms in Adults with Multiple Sclerosis,” I am seeking to better understand the diagnosis experience for people with multiple sclerosis (MS), the clustering of early/initial symptoms for the first MS attack, and to better understand trajectory typologies for symptoms and their severity over time.

 

I have collaborated with nurses, a geneticist, a statistician, and physician to conduct this work. In the future, I hope to incorporate biomarkers and genetics/genomics to these created symptom phenotypes to develop them further. I would like to see if seemingly subjective symptoms and symptom experiences have an objective, more easily observable component.

 

Additionally, I would like to explore if the identified symptom clusters and trajectories seen in people with MS may be applied to other types of chronic disease. I would like to target the shared biological underpinnings of symptoms, such that we may better select or design drug and treatment options to maintain, prevent, or eliminate adverse symptoms regardless of diagnosis, to consider a different way to observe and categorize the symptom experience for people living with a chronic health condition

 

My areas of research interest include: 

 

 

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