Laurie J Duckworth, PhD, APRN, FNP-C , FAAN

TEACHING

Dr. Duckworth teaches Inquiry and Evidence in Professional Nursing Practice,

RESEARCH

Dr. Laurie Duckworth is an clinical professor at the University of Florida College of Nursing. She holds a joint appointment at UF Health as the Director of Nursing Research. Dr. Duckworth has 39 years of professional nursing experience including practice in critical care, pharmacogenetics, pulmonology, hematology and clinical drug trials. For the past 30 years, she has managed care for children and adults with asthma. She helped design research protocols to measure exhaled nitric oxide as an indicator of airway inflammation. Her normative values in children were adopted by the American Thoracic Society. Her research focus includes identifying patients with sickle cell disease who have co-morbid diagnosis of asthma, putting them at risk for acute chest syndrome; a leading cause of mortality. Her contributions have led to an Integrated Pediatric Sickle Cell Disease and Pulmonary Care Clinic model for patients with sickle cell disease and asthma in North and Central Florida, with recent adoption of the model occurring in Rochester, New York. She is collaborating with healthcare teams in Nigeria and Ghana.

SERVICE

Dr. Duckworth holds a joint appointment at UF Health as the Administrative Director of Nursing Research. She currently serves on the CTSI Learning Health System Steering Committee and the Faculty Executive Committee.

EDUCATION

Dr. Duckworth received a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Florida State University in 1983. She earned a Master of Science in Nursing degree from the University of Florida in 2003. She was an NIH Fellow in the National Institutes of Nursing Research at Georgetown University in 2004. Dr. Duckworth also earned her PhD degree from the University of Florida College of Nursing. She is a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner.

Dr. Duckworth’s area of expertise includes asthma, Sickle Cell Disease and genetic epidemiology.