Gwen Bernacki, MD, MHSA, is a cardiologist and advanced geriatrics research fellow at the Veterans Administration of Puget Sound. Prior to attending medical school, Dr. Bernacki received a Master of Health Services Administration from the University of Michigan School of Public Health and completed a post-graduate administrative fellowship at Northwestern Memorial. She also completed a post-doctoral research fellowship in the Cambia Palliative Center of Excellence at the University of Washington in 2020.
Dr. Bernacki works to develop active partnerships with her patients that maximize health outcomes and consistently strives to find better treatment pathways to enhance quality of life.
Dr. Bernacki earned her MD with research honors at the University at Buffalo School of Medicine and is board certified in Cardiovascular Disease and Internal Medicine. Her clinical interests include care of older adults with heart failure and multiple chronic conditions. Her research is focused on examining the effect of multi-morbidity on quality of care among older adults with cardiovascular disease, particularly those with co-existing chronic kidney disease. She has also examined shared decision making and its effect on discussions about goals of care, as well as the approach to code status reversal for cardiovascular procedures. She is working toward further delineating how decisions about treatment choices are made to eventually improve clinician-patient communication and patient outcomes.
