Anna Newcomb, PhD, MSW, LCSW, is the Education Director for Inova Health System’s surgical simulation center (Advanced Surgical Technology and Education Center). Dr. Newcomb provides academic support and mentoring for the Inova Surgery service line, and leadership to the Inova System regarding patient centered communication research, development, and training. When serving as a trauma and emergency department clinical social worker at Inova in the 1990s, Dr. Newcomb founded a program, the Trauma Survivors Network (TSN), to support trauma patients and families through peer-mentoring and education. The TSN is now cited by the American College of Surgeons as a program satisfying trauma centers’ requirement to provide psychosocial support to patients and families and has now been implemented in over 200 hospitals nationwide.

Dr. Newcomb's primary focus is on the initiating, directing, evaluating, and maintaining a communication curriculum for Inova’s Surgical Residency Program, integrating former trauma patients as simulated patients and providing ongoing practice and evaluation of surgical residents’ patient/family centered communication skills. Dr. Newcomb has developed communication curricula for an international audience of medical students, for Inova’s nurses, clinical technicians, and for new hospital resident interns, and shares her work extensively through conferences and peer reviewed publications.