Elizabeth Glynn Nilson MD, MPH, FACP

Dr. Elizabeth Nilson is the Director for Complex Care Communication in General Medicine at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center. Dr. Nilson’s project will integrate Ariadne’s “Serious Illness Conversation Guide” into the general medicine group at Lahey Hospital and Medical Center as part of a larger institution-wide initiative. This will include training providers in advanced communication skills training and use of the guide, identification of a work-flow to schedule high-risk patients with their primary care provider for the conversation, and the construction of a method for primary care providers to work collaboratively with subspecialty colleagues around aspects of advancing illness like prognosis, side effects, burdens of potential treatments and integrating patient goals and wishes into the care plan.

Dr. Nilson went to medical school at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, trained in internal medicine at NY Presbyterian - Weill Cornell Medical Center, served as chief resident at NY Downtown Hospital, and completed the certificate program in Clinical Ethics Consultation through the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Preventive Medicine Residency at NY Presbyterian-Cornell and Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and the Partners/Harvard Palliative Care Education and Practice course. She worked as an ethics consultant and general internist at NY Presbyterian-Cornell prior to coming to Lahey in 2009. She is vice-chair for Ethics at Lahey and has been the Residency Director of the Internal Medicine Program at Lahey since 2010.