Associate Professor and Researcher, University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus, School of Nursing
Email: sherily.pereira@upr.edu
Dr. Sherily Pereira is a nurse anesthetist, MSN-SA from the University of Puerto Rico, Medical Sciences Campus in 2001, obtained a PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2016, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing in 2022. Dr. Pereira is part of the interdisciplinary team of research and nurse anesthetist at the UPR, Comprehensive Cancer Center-Hospital. Her clinical career and research focus on supporting the health and thriving of cancer survivors through better pain and symptom management. Her extensive direct care experience allowed her to observe the impacts of pain management on post-surgery outcomes, disease progression, and patients’ quality of life. Her doctoral research and training addressed acute pain assessment and management in sedated patients during the early postoperative period following general anesthesia. Their findings were published in a leading peer-reviewed journal of the field: Pereira, S., Wysocki, A., Arroyo-Novoa, C.M., Sanzero, L. (2018) Acute Pain Assessment in Sedated Patients in the Early Postoperative Period. The Clinical Journal of Pain. PMCID: PMC6033670, and Pereira, S. (2018). Acute Pain Assessment in Sedated Postoperative Patients. Oncology Nursing Forum 2018, 45(2), 35 DOI:10.1188/18.ONF.E35. Another subsequent pilot study, ROSES in PR: Reduction of symptom impacts on sedentarism in breast cancer survivors in Puerto Rico, abstract published in the Puerto Rico Health Sciences Journal. (Pereira, S., Pacheco, E., Lopez-Córdova, N., 2021). Her studies have laid the groundwork for research designed to develop more effective and cultural-responsive measures for pain assessment and improvement of pain management among Puerto Rican surgical-treated cancer patients: Multimodal Analgesia with Ultrasound Guided Transversus Abdominis Plane (TAP) Block for Abdominal Surgeries in Cancer Patients Living in Puerto Rico, conducted at the UPR Comprehensive Cancer Center-Hospital (2023). She is also committed to fostering the next generation of researchers, especially in nursing.
(Updated December 5, 2023)