Deena Kelly Costa, PhD, RN, FAAN

Deena Kelly Costa

Helen Porter Jayne & Martha Prosser Jayne Associate Professor of Nursing

Yale School of Nursing - Room 20510

email: deena.costa@yale.edu

Dr. Deena Kelly Costa PhD, RN, FAAN is the Helen Porter Jayne & Martha Prosser Jayne Associate Professor of Nursing at Yale School of Nursing and holds a secondary appointment in the Section of Pulmonary, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine at Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Costa is a trained health services researcher with nearly a decade of clinical expertise in adult critical care nursing. She is one of the only PhD-prepared nurses in the US to devote her unique training and expertise as a critical care nurse to healthcare workforce research that equally focuses on all members of the interprofessional team (nurses, physicians, and others). In her work, Dr. Costa studies how to optimize the organization and management of health care, with specific emphasis on the nursing workforce and critical care teams. She is dedicated to supporting all clinicians and creating an environment that optimizes their ability to provide high quality care for each and every patient. Her research has been published in several leading journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, and CHEST.

In Dr. Costa’s federally funded research, she incorporates both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine ICU interprofessional teams, patient outcomes and how to best support patients, families, and clinician well-being. She is PI of federally funded research projects (see current grants below) from National Heart Lung, and Blood Institute, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; she has previously received funding from Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, American Thoracic Society, American Nurses Foundation, and other foundation awards. She is an Associate Editor of CHEST Critical Care, and on the editorial board of the American Journal of Critical Care, and Heart & Lung. Dr. Costa was inducted as a Fellow in the American Academy of Nursing (2019), is a recipient of the ATS Nursing Assembly Early Career Achievement Award (2019) and Harriet H. Werley New Investigator Award from Midwest Nursing Research Society (2017). Notably, she served an advisor for Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s office during spring 2020 that informed the development of Executive Order 2020-30 that suspended scope of practice laws for advance practice nurses and eliminated regulatory and legal barriers for the nursing workforce in Michigan during the pandemic.

Dr. Costa completed her Master’s and PhD in nursing outcomes research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy Research and a post-doctoral fellowship in critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, Department of Critical Care Medicine in the Clinical Research, Investigation, and Systems Modeling of Acute Illness (CRISMA) Center. She has a Bachelor’s of Italian Studies from Boston University and BSN from Binghamton University. Dr. Costa joins YSN after working as an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan School of Nursing.

Research Interests

Dr. Costa is an experienced health services researcher that studies the organization and management of health care, with specific expertise in survey methods, quantitative and qualitative methods approaches to improving care delivery and patient outcomes. She has a dedicated commitment to supporting the nursing workforce through research and policy.

Current Grants

NHLBI, Organizational resilience: A novel strategy for improving ICU outcomes (R01HL163177) (contact PI: Costa, MPI: Buchbinder) 2023-2028

AHRQ, The impact of specialty nursing certification on patient outcomes and costs in acute care: An individual value-added performance analysis (R01HS028806) (contact PI: Yakusheva, MPI, Costa) 2023-2028

AHRQ, A quality and cost analysis of interprofessional team continuity in ICU (R01HS028438) (co-investigator, PI: Yakusheva)

Selected Publications

NIH bibliography

  1. Costa DK, Lizano D, Garland A, Fowler R, Liu VX, Scales DC, Wunsch H, Gershengorn HB. (2025). Availability of advanced practice providers in adult intensive care units in the United States: A survey. American Journal of Critical Care. 34(4):285-292. doi:10.4037/ajcc2025655 | Watch Video Interview
  2. Ratliff HC, Yakusheva O, Costa DK. (2024). The rising wave of healthcare worker strikes: Balancing advocacy and patient well-being. Annals of American Thoracic Society, 21(12): 1647-1650. doi:10.1513/AnnalsATS.202402-176IP
  3. Buchbinder M, Kelly LA, Yakusheva O, Iwashyna TJ, Costa DK. (2024). Organizational resilience: a systems-based approach for addressing the workforce crisis in intensive care. CHEST, 166(4): 673-675. doi:10.1016/chest.2024.05.036
  4. Costa DK, Valley TS, Friese CR. (2024). Partners for change: Addressing the nursing workforce crisis through nurse-physician collaboration. JAMA Internal Medicine, 184(5): 463-464.   doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2024.0183
  5. Costa DK, Yakusheva O, Khadr L, Ratliff HC, Lee KA, Sjoding M, Jimenez JV, Marriott DJ. (2024). Shift-level team familiarity is associated with improved outcomes in mechanically ventilated adults. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 210(3) : 311-317.  doi: 10.1164/rccm.202310-1971OC
  6. Costa DK, Botley EM, Mosely EA, Manojlovich M, Wright NC. (2024). Knowing your team in the intensive care unit: An ethnographic study on familiarity. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 38(4): 593-601.  doi: 10.1080/13561820.2024.2329968
  7. Costa DK, Friese CR. (2022). Policy strategies for addressing current threats to the U.S. Nursing workforce. New England Journal of Medicine, doi: 10.1164/rccm.202210-1975ED
  8. Costa DK, Liu H., Boltey EM., Yakusheva, O. (2020). The structure of critical care nursing teams and patient outcomes: A network analysis. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.   doi: 10.1164/rccm.201903-0543LE.

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