Faculty & Staff

Karen Dunn Lopez, RN, MPH, PhD

Assistant Professor,
Department of Health System Sciences

NURS 1012
UIC College of Nursing
845 South Damen Avenue (MC 802)
Chicago, IL 60612-7350

Phone: 312.996.0067
Email: kdunnl2@uic.edu

Research / Discovery

Dr. Lopez's research seeks to identify successful technological interventions that will improve care coordination, efficiency, and reduce clinician workload. Much of her research incorporates human factors engineering, user-centered design and usability methods. She is currently studying the use of asynchronous alpha text pagers between medical-surgical nurses and first year resident physicians. This research will serve as the foundation for multicenter research exploring the use of other communication and information technologies including use of the electronic health record to improve overall quality of care. She also is co-investigator of a study of the implementation of electronic medical records in a rural urgent care facility.

She is also a member of the collaborative College of Nursing and College of Engineering's Center for End of Life Research Team contributing to several research projects. On this team, she will lead two projects. The first will expand HANDS, a software for nursing care planning and communication, for physician use. The second project will use a large HANDS clinical database for exploring the impact of nurse staffing patterns on patient pain outcomes.

Teaching / Learning
Dr. Lopez teaches from the Chicago site. She is a mentor to masters and doctoral students whose area of interest are nursing administration and informatics. She has taught graduate level nursing inquiry I & II, evidence based practice and nursing informatics.

Service / Practice
Dr. Lopez is an active member of American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and Sigma Theta Tau. She is a paper reviewer for the AMIA's annual scientific program.

Personal
Dr. Lopez enjoys reading, biking, yoga, wine, travel and watching her children in crew regattas or on the soccer and football fields.

Current Research Projects and Web Sites:

• An Evaluation of the Effects of Text Paging on Perceptions About Nurse-Physician Communication, Collaboration and Quality of Care.
• Evaluating the Impact of Electronic Medical Record System on Outpatient Clinic Practices.