Dr. Elise Tarbi is a board-certified Adult-Gerontology Primary Care Nurse Practitioner with clinical experience and advanced certification in Hospice and Palliative care. She joins the Department of Nursing as faculty after completing her postdoctoral training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care Research Fellow. She is also a member of the Vermont Conversation Lab. She has a deep commitment to improving care, through scholarship, teaching, and practice, for people affected by serious illness.
Dr. Tarbi’s research seeks to understand and improve serious illness communication, so patients and families feel seen and heard. She does this through directly studying conversations, linking what actually happens in the clinical encounter with the emotional and cognitive experiences of patients, their families, and clinicians. Dr. Tarbi’s work combines traditional qualitative approaches with advances in machine learning methods. Insights from her research could ultimately move us closer to a health care system that routinely measures and prioritizes high-quality communication.
Areas of expertise: Palliative care, communication, qualitative research
