Bruce L. Lambert

About

Bruce L. Lambert is a professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Medical Social Sciences and an adjunct position in the Department of Pharmacy Systems, Outcomes, and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy. His research focuses on health communication, including patient safety and healthcare quality, with specific emphasis on using information technology to improve medication safety. Lambert's work addresses issues such as drug name confusion, medication safety, health information technology, prescribing behavior, pharmaceutical promotion, medical liability reform, and health outcomes related to provider-patient communication. He has published extensively in reputable journals such as JAMA, The Archives of Internal Medicine, and Medical Care, among others. Lambert is also the president of BLL Consulting, Inc., a firm specializing in problems involving health, communication, and technology. Additionally, he blogs about communication at HowCommunicationWorks.com. His educational background includes a PhD, AM, and AB in Speech Communication from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Research topics

• Medicine
• Internal medicine
• Emergency medicine
• Psychiatry
• Physical therapy
• Anesthesia
• Psychology
• Gastroenterology
• Nursing
• Family medicine

Selected publications

• Ten Principles for More Conservative, Care-Full Diagnosis

  Annals of Internal Medicine · 2019-06-03 · 29 citations

  letter

  Letters4 June 2019Ten Principles for More Conservative, Care-Full DiagnosisGordon D. Schiff, MD, Kurt Kroenke, MD, Bruce L. Lambert, PhD, Lisa Sanders, MD, and Aziz Sheikh, MDGordon D. Schiff, MDBrigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care, Boston, Massachusetts (G.D.S.)Search for more papers by this author, Kurt Kroenke, MDRegenstrief Institute, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana (K.K.)Search for more papers by this author, Bruce L. Lamb…

  PublisherDOI

• A Prospective Observational Study of Emergency Department–Initiated Physical Therapy for Acute Low Back Pain

  Physical Therapy · 2020 · 26 citations

  OBJECTIVE: Low back pain accounts for nearly 4 million emergency department (ED) visits annually and is a significant source of disability. Physical therapy has been suggested as a potentially effective nonopioid treatment for low back pain; however, no studies to our knowledge have yet evaluated the emerging resource of ED-initiated physical therapy. The study objective was to compare patient-reported outcomes in patients receiving ED-initiated physical therapy and patients receiving usual care…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cellular Immunity Is Critical for Assessing COVID-19 Vaccine Effectiveness in Immunocompromised Individuals

  Frontiers in Immunology · 2022 · 25 citations

  COVID-19 vaccine clinical development was conducted with unprecedented speed. Immunity measurements were concentrated on the antibody response which left significant gaps in our understanding how robust and long-lasting immune protection develops. Better understanding the cellular immune response will fill those gaps, especially in the elderly and immunocompromised populations which not only have the highest risk for severe infection, but also frequently have inadequate antibody responses. Altho…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of a multi-component intervention to reduce post-surgical opioid prescribing: study protocol of a mixed-methods design

  BMJ Open · 2019-06-01 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access

  INTRODUCTION: Opioids prescribed after surgery accounted for 5% of the 191 million opioid prescriptions filled in 2017. Approximately 80% of the opioid pills prescribed by surgical care providers remain unused, leaving a substantial number of opioids available for non-medical use. We developed a multi-component intervention to address surgical providers' role in the overprescribing of opioids. Our study will determine effective strategies for reducing post-surgical prescribing while ensuring ade…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How often do prescribers include indications in drug orders? Analysis of 4 million outpatient prescriptions

  American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy · 2019-06-18 · 19 citations

  article

  PURPOSE: To examine the extent to which outpatient clinicians currently document drug indications in prescription instructions. METHODS: Free-text sigs were extracted from all outpatient prescriptions generated by the computerized prescriber order entry system of a major academic institution during a 5-year period. Natural language processing was used to identify drug indications. The data set was analyzed to determine the rates at which prescribers included indications. It was stratified by pro…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant U19HS021093

  NIH · $4.3M · 2017

• NIH Grant R01HS011609

  NIH · $1.7M · 2008

• Preventing Wrong-Drug and Wrong-Patient Errors with Indication Alerts in CPOE Systems

  NIH · $2.0M · 2016–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Gordon D. Schiff

  Harvard University

  43 shared

• William Galanter

  University of Illinois Chicago

  36 shared

• Neeha Shrestha

  Northwestern University

  15 shared

• Suzanne Falck

  Chicago Department of Public Health

  13 shared

• Jason S. Adelman

  Columbia University Irving Medical Center

  12 shared

• Sumitrajit Dhar

  Federated Co-operatives (Canada)

  11 shared

• Robert A. Green

  Johns Hopkins University

  11 shared

• Niall A. M. Klyn

  The Ohio State University

  10 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Communication

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  1986

• M.A., Communication

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  1982

• B.A., Speech Communication

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  1979

Similar researchers at Northwestern University

• Nicholas Diakopoulosh-38
• Michelle Shumateh-32
• Erik C. Nisbeth-26