Dr. Anderson is Virginia Stone Professor of Nursing and a Senior Fellow in the Duke University Center for Aging and Human Development. She is also a Research Development Coordinator in the Office of Research Affairs in the School of Nursing. She earned a BSN from Stockton State College in New Jersey, a Master of Science in Gerontological Nursing and Master of Arts in Social Gerontology from the University of Pennsylvania, and the PhD in nursing with a business minor from The University of Texas at Austin. She has extensive experience teaching graduate courses in managing complex healthcare systems, chronic illness, and outcomes in health care.
Dr. Anderson's scholarship is dedicated to improving management of nursing homes, an area of rapidly growing need. Her research has been interdisciplinary from its inception, and she has collaborated with scholars at Duke and across the country in schools of nursing, business, economics, engineering and medicine. She pioneered the application of complexity theory and management science in nursing in analysis of the institutional environment of the nursing home. Her studies that show the relationships between patient outcomes and organizational structure, interpersonal relationships of staff and families, patterns of staff communication, and employee turnover have given researchers new tools for implementing evidence-based changes in the care delivery practices in long term care facilities.