Bio
Dr. Barr is currently a Professor Emerita of Anesthesiology in the University Medical Line at Stanford, and a Staff Anesthesiologist and Intensivist at the VA Palo Alto Medical Center. She has a Bachelors of Science Degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Southern California, and received her MD degree from Johns Hopkins. She is board certified in internal medicine, anesthesiology, and critical care medicine. After completing a post-doctoral research fellowship in clinical pharmacology at Stanford, Dr. Barr joined the Stanford faculty in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine, and became a Staff Anesthesiologist and Intensivist at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System in 1992. Dr. Barr’s research interests include the mathematical modeling of the clinical pharmacology of sedatives and opioids commonly administered to ICU patients, and ICU outcomes research. Dr. Barr has published over 65 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters. Dr. Barr has over 30 years of experience in critical care leadership, innovation, quality improvement, education, and research. She is passionate about improving the lives of critically ill patients.
Dr. Barr was the lead author of the Society of Critical Care Medicine's (SCCM) 2013 Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Management of Pain, Agitation, and Delirium in Adults Patients in the Intensive Care Unit. She is a founding member of the SCCM's ICU Liberation Campaign, and helped to create the ABCDEF Bundle to promote widespread adoption of these guidelines. Dr. Barr was a senior faculty member of the SCCM's ICU Liberation Campaign Collaborative, and co-authored a landmark study which demonstrated significant improvements in ICU patient outcomes following implementation of the ABCDEF Bundle. She is currently the Co-Chair of the SCCM's ICU Liberation Committee. Dr. Barr has previously participated in several national collaboratives to improve ICU patient care and outcomes, including the IHI's 100k Lives and the 5 Million Lives Campaigns. She also previously served as the Chair of the SCCM's Patient and Family Support Committee and the Ethics Committee. Dr. Barr is nationally recognized as a leader in critical care quality improvement research. As a Stanford faculty member, Dr. Barr co-founded the first intensivist-led ICU Team at the Palo Alto VA in 1993, and she created the VA ICU Nurse Practitioner Program there in 2011, the first of its kind nationally. She has served as the Medical Director of the VA Respiratory Therapy Department for over 25 years, and as the Medical Director of the VA ICU NP Program since its inception. Dr. Barr co-founded and served as the Director of the Stanford Critical Care Medical Student Core Clerkship for over 10 years, and is currently the Associate Clerkship Director. She has also been a member of the Stanford Faculty Senate, the Medical School Admissions Committee, and the Human Subjects Committee.
