About

Scott Atay is an Associate Professor of Clinical Surgery at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. He specializes in thoracic surgery with an emphasis on malignant diseases of the chest, including esophageal cancer. Dr. Atay completed his surgical training at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, and further specialized in thoracic surgery through a fellowship at MD Anderson Cancer Center. His training included advanced surgical techniques such as minimally invasive procedures (VATS) and robotic surgery. He also obtained additional research training at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NCI Surgery Branch, focusing on genetic alterations in malignant pleural mesothelioma. His current clinical and research efforts are centered on multimodality treatment approaches—combining chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation, and surgery—for patients with both early and advanced stage thoracic malignancies. Dr. Atay is committed to delivering compassionate, high-quality care driven by the most up-to-date evidence, and he is actively involved in research that advances surgical oncology and thoracic surgery practices.

Research topics

• World Wide Web
• Medical emergency
• Pathology
• Nursing
• Medicine

Selected publications

• “I Don’t Take Orders from You”: How Families and Travel Nurses Impact Healthcare Employee Burnout

  American Journal of Qualitative Research · 2026-04-11

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  <i>Intensive care unit (ICU) employees experience specific organizational communication challenges that can increase their stress and burnout while decreasing their overall wellness. Twelve structured interviews and ten hours of observation with ICU employees were conducted to explore perceptions of increased stress and burnout. Multiple factors contributing to negative impacts on workplace wellness and burnout have been identified in previous communication literature, including work overload, time constraints, lack of management support, and role stressors. The findings of this study extended research on two additional organizational stressors linked to communication—patient families and travel nurses. Interactions with patient families since the COVID-19 pandemic have challenged ICU employees, with family members demonstrating overbearing and controlling tendencies as well as persistent questioning of ICU employees. The presence of travel nurses during COVID-19 were identified as a second stressor, with travel nurses’ inexperience in the ICU units creating communication challenges. Pay discrepancies between travel nurses and ICU employees also contributed to perceptions of injustice. The identification of patient families and travel nurses as two significant organizational stressors expands previous organizational research beyond the identification of job characteristics to illustrate how communicative practices contribute to emotional exhaustion in organizations.</i>

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Navigating Complexity: A Forum on Communication Research in High Reliability Organizations

  Management Communication Quarterly · 2025-04-15 · 4 citations

  article

  This forum joins communication researchers who explore high reliability organizations (HROs) and teams to discuss the communicative foundations of HRO. We argue that organizational communication researchers can make meaningful contributions to present challenges in HRO research. These challenges include (1) HRO’s focus on organizations versus processes of organizing, (2) tensions in defining success and failure to create reliability, and (3) the privileging of rational thought patterns and communication over emotional and care-centered communication. The authors in this forum push boundaries around organization types, consider overlooked and obscured knowledge, and question the role of power and materiality in HROs. Together, the forum advocates for the unique contributions organizational communication scholars can make to the study of HRO and, just as significantly, what HRO theorizing can contribute to organizational communication.

  PublisherDOI

• Let’s go girls: a content analysis of women in U.S. military Instagram accounts

  Qualitative Research Reports in Communication · 2025-04-04

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• “When I Don’t Want to do Something, I Just Delete the Email”: How a Failed Survey Indicated a Philosophical Imperative for Qualitative Improvision and Rigid Flexibility

  International Journal of Business Communication · 2025-08-20

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This field report provides an example of how reflexivity during organizational fieldwork revealed the need to adapt research methods in the middle of an ongoing research study. At the conclusion of the first observation period with an aerial firefighting organization, an extremely low survey response rate was recorded despite strong organizational support during field work discussions and interviews. To continue to stay aligned with the axiology of a post-positivist approach, which dictates that research must be value neutral, a methodological pivot to a qualitative method was conducted. By incorporating research survey questions into an interview format through this research pivot, this study uncovered hidden data on the specific contexts by which the use of technology was accepted or rejected within aerial firefighting communities that would have otherwise been missed. This field report explains the post-positivistic philosophical requirement that necessitated the adoption of a research pivot after the failed survey and argues for adoption of rigid flexibility in social science research as a means of increasing research rigor. This report concludes with a discussion of how transparency in reporting research failures can improve collective learning and methodological practices for emerging communication scholars.

  PublisherDOI

• Beyond rationality: The unsettling presence of embodied trauma and grief after high reliability organization failure

  Communication Monographs · 2025-05-06 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The role of stroke care infrastructure on the effectiveness of a hub-and-spoke telestroke model in South Carolina

  Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases · 2024-03-29 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The politics of social media: Utilizing political candidates’ Instagram posts to teach political argumentation and visual argument analysis

  Communication Teacher · 2023-08-29

  article1st authorCorresponding

  AbstractAnalysis of political and visual arguments is a key exercise traditionally included in undergraduate argumentation courses. This activity teaches students how to identify and analyze political candidate arguments presented on visual social media platforms, demonstrating how argumentation theory applies to social media campaigns. In the exercise, students identify an active political candidate’s Instagram account and select a recent post for analysis, focusing primarily on evaluating the visual arguments created within the post. After the analysis, students present their findings to the class, including evidence of the most compelling visual arguments identified. This activity incorporates the use of a familiar visual medium to help students connect wargumentation theories and concepts with relevant social media messages they may encounter in their daily lives. It also capitalizes on students’ existing use of popular visual social media to introduce basic argumentation theory, political communication practices, and visual argument analysis techniques.Courses This single-class activity is useful in undergraduate communication courses related to argumentation, political communication, and social media messaging. Relevant courses can include argumentation and advocacy, political argumentation, or visual argument analysis units of any course. For example, this activity can be successfully deployed in an Introduction to Political Communication course’s unit on the use of visual media during political campaigns.Objectives The learning objectives of this activity are: (1) to analyze visual arguments as they appear on social media and (2) to identify specific elements of strong and weak political arguments on a visually dominant social media platform.

  PublisherDOI

• The politics of social media: Utilizing political candidates’ Instagram posts to teach political argumentation and visual argument analysis

  Figshare · 2023-01-01

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Analysis of political and visual arguments is a key exercise traditionally included in undergraduate argumentation courses. This activity teaches students how to identify and analyze political candidate arguments presented on visual social media platforms, demonstrating how argumentation theory applies to social media campaigns. In the exercise, students identify an active political candidate’s Instagram account and select a recent post for analysis, focusing primarily on evaluating the visual arguments created within the post. After the analysis, students present their findings to the class, including evidence of the most compelling visual arguments identified. This activity incorporates the use of a familiar visual medium to help students connect wargumentation theories and concepts with relevant social media messages they may encounter in their daily lives. It also capitalizes on students’ existing use of popular visual social media to introduce basic argumentation theory, political communication practices, and visual argument analysis techniques. This single-class activity is useful in undergraduate communication courses related to argumentation, political communication, and social media messaging. Relevant courses can include argumentation and advocacy, political argumentation, or visual argument analysis units of any course. For example, this activity can be successfully deployed in an Introduction to Political Communication course’s unit on the use of visual media during political campaigns. The learning objectives of this activity are: (1) to analyze visual arguments as they appear on social media and (2) to identify specific elements of strong and weak political arguments on a visually dominant social media platform.

  PublisherDOI

• Rapid Evaluations of Telehealth Strategies to Address Hypertension: A Mixed-Methods Exploration at Two US Health Systems During the COVID-19 Pandemic

  Preventing Chronic Disease · 2022 · 6 citations

  • Medicine
  • Nursing
  • Medical emergency

  Telehealth is a promising intervention for hypertension management and control and was rapidly adopted by health systems to ensure continuity of care during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rapid evaluations of telehealth strategies at 2 US health systems explored how telehealth affected health care access and blood pressure outcomes among populations disproportionately affected by hypertension. Both health systems implemented telehealth strategies to maintain continuity of health care services during the COVID-19 pandemic. The evaluations used a mixed-method approach; qualitative interviews were conducted with key staff, and quantitative analyses were performed on patient electronic health record data. Both health systems exhibited similar trends in telehealth use, which allowed for continued access to health care for some patients but hindered other patients who had limited access to the internet or the equipment needed. Telehealth provides opportunities for blood pressure control and management. Further evaluation is needed to understand the role of broadband internet access as a social determinant of health and its impact on equitable patient access to health care.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reviewing High Reliability Team (HRT) Scholarship: A 21st Century Approach to Safety

  Small Group Research · 2022-08-24 · 30 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  High reliability team (HRT) theorizing emerged from high reliability organization (HRO) theory and now represents a distinct subset of HRO literature. Seeking to capture the development and range of HRT research, a comprehensive literature review was conducted. This systematic review of HRT scholarship, the first of its kind, provides a foundation from which small group and team scholars across disciplines may reflect on key lessons and chart future research. This review includes 71 articles across 21 disciplines and incorporates historical reflection on HRT theory foundations, existing empirical support, critiques and rivals, theory extensions, and ideas for future scholarship efforts.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Kara Suvada

  Emory University

  12 shared

• Meera Sreedhara

  Cherokee Nation

  12 shared

• W Alexander Keaton

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  9 shared

• Myles Bostic

  9 shared

• Kincaid Lowe Beasley

  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

  9 shared

• Amena Abbas

  National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

  6 shared

• Jackie Soo

  National Opinion Research Center

  6 shared

• Mithuna Srinivasan

  National Opinion Research Center

  6 shared

Education

• PhD, Communication, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

  University of Southern California

• M.A. Communication, Communication

  The University of Oklahoma

  2017

• B.A. English & Writing; Interdisciplinary Ethics

  Southern Oregon University

  2004