Dr. Travers, Ph.D., MSN, RN, FAEN, FAMIA, is the lead faculty for the MSN-Informatics program at Duke University School of Nursing. She has a strong foundation of clinical experience as an emergency nurse, informaticist, and educator. Dr. Travers has worked in informatics since the early 1990s, first in clinical informatics and later as a researcher and teacher. In addition to over 30 years of clinical emergency nursing experience, she has a master’s in Nursing Management, a doctorate in Information Science, and a certificate in Health Outcomes. Her expertise includes clinical decision support for emergency department triage, ED clinical data systems development, implementation and evaluation, and public health informatics. She was instrumental in refining and disseminating the Emergency Severity Index triage system. This patient acuity index is widely used to improve clinical care safety and facilitate health services research, such as the study of ED crowding.
Dr. Travers has worked extensively as a researcher to facilitate secondary uses of ED data for health services and clinical research, syndromic surveillance, and quality improvement. She collaborates with Operations and Statistics researchers, analytics developers, and ED managers. She led the early development of syndromic surveillance in North Carolina as the original principal investigator of the CDC-funded project that created what is now called the North Carolina Disease Event and Epidemiologic Collection Tool (NC DETECT.org).
Dr. Travers infuses the MSN-Informatics program with a solid foundation in evidence-based informatics development and implementation principles and real-world practical expertise. The Duke School of Nursing informatics course instructors include informatics practice, research, and system development experts.