Linda Lindsey Davis came to Duke in 2005 as Professor in the School of Nursing and Senior Fellow in the Duke Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development. In 2006, she was named Ann Henshaw Gardiner Distinguished Professor (one of the first distinguished professorships in the School of Nursing). She served as Chair of the PhD Program from 2007 through 2011.
Dr. Davis earned her BSN from Old Dominion University, her MSN from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her PhD in Nursing from the University of Maryland. She also completed a primary care faculty fellowship at the University of Rochester and postdoctoral studies on family research methods at the University of California-San Francisco. As an adult nurse practitioner, Davis spent much of her career practicing in elder-care settings in New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Alabama. She was one of the first Robert Wood Johnson Nurse Fellows in primary care. She was elected to the national Academies of Practice (Nursing) in 1989 and the American Academy of Nursing in 2007.
Dr. Davis has extensive teaching and administrative experience in baccalaureate, Master’s and doctoral programs in nursing. She has held leadership positions with the national Alzheimer’s Association, the TriServices Military Research Panel, and the American Nurses Foundation, and is a member of the scientific review panel of the National Institute of Nursing Research. Dr. Davis is a member of Sigma Theta Tau and the Gerontological Society of America. She has published more than 70 papers and book chapters on elder care education, advanced practice, and research. She recently completed a randomized trial of skill training strategies to help family caregivers provide home care for frail elders with Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease.