Jennifer Burgher Seaman

Dr. Seaman’s program of research is centered on advancing primary palliative care—the integration of palliative care principles and practices in the routine care of patients—in the ICU setting. Her specific research focus is enhancing clinician-family communication and the implementation of routine, timely interdisciplinary family meetings in the ICU. Her current project applies principles from implementation science and organization behavior to the development and pilot testing of a scalable intervention to ensure that timely interdisciplinary family meetings are held for critically ill ICU patients. Dr. Seaman has conducted studies on measures of nursing care quality and patterns of palliative care consultation for mechanically ventilated ICU patients; hospice and family involvement in end-of-life care; prevalence of advance directives among older adults admitted to the ICU; and barriers and facilitators to the conduct of interdisciplinary family meetings in the ICU. She has been awarded NIH, foundation, and intramural funding for her training and research work. Dr. Seaman has expertise in the areas of critical care, gerontology, palliative care, and bioethics, along with skills in qualitative methods, intervention fidelity, and implementation science. She is affiliated with the University’s Center for Bioethics and Health Law, and she currently is funded through a Cambia Health Foundation Sojourns Scholar Leadership career development award.