The QSRG Team

Chris Goeschel, RN, MPA, MPS, ScD (c)

Thu, 1 Oct 2009 09:57:14 -0400

Ms. Goeschel is Director of Patient Safety and Quality Initiatives, and Manager of Operations for The Johns Hopkins University Quality and Safety Research Group (QSRG) Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine.

She is a clinical instructor in the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and associate faculty in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. An executive with over 20 years of acute care experience, Chris has held positions that include both pediatric and adult critical care R.N., Chief Nursing Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Compliance Officer. Ms. Goeschel has a long and successful record of accomplishment in strategic and program development, project management, and education/training for health system leaders’ at all structural levels.

In 2000, she created a non-profit division at the Michigan Health & Hospital Association dedicated to Quality and Patient Safety Improvement, the “MHA Keystone Center” serving as its Executive Director. A major Keystone project involved ICU’s across Michigan, conducted in collaboration with Hopkins Patient Safety Leader, Dr. Peter Pronovost and his research group. The success of that project was the subject of lead articles in The New England Journal of Medicine and fostered a number of national and international projects that are still evolving. Ms. Goeschel was a national Patient Safety Leadership Fellow in 2003-2004, and has served on a variety of state and national nursing and health care leadership boards.

She is a frequent speaker on topics of quality, safety and leading change, and currently focuses her efforts on the development and implementation of large collaborative projects nationally and, through an evolving relationship between the QSRG and the World Health Organization, internationally.

Chris is a doctoral candidate in Health Systems Management at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine where her research explores characteristics of hospital boards and their association with hospital quality and safety performance.

Laura Bauer, MPH

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:17:39 -0400

Laura Bauer, MPH is a Senior Clinical Research Coordinator in the Quality and Safety Research Group (QSRG), Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She has 5 years of experience in health services research and evaluation. Specifically, Ms. Bauer’s previous experience includes contributing to the implementation and evaluation of initiatives with the objectives of preventing, identifying, and treating childhood obesity; coordinating a study that examined mental health care disparities in an urban, impoverished population; and managing a study that assessed the extent of collaborative care occurring in regards to the treatment of childhood ADHD. Her areas of interest include the evaluation and improvement of health outcomes through collaborative efforts, the IRB process and protection of human subjects, and data collection, management and reporting.

Currently, Ms. Bauer is providing support, constructing materials, and compiling information for an interdisciplinary observational study aimed at assessing the effectiveness of team process measures in cardiac operating rooms. For the On the CUSP: STOP BSI project, Ms. Bauer will be coordinating project implementation with frontline caregivers, state hospital associations, and QSRG state leads to ensure that participating states successfully navigate through the quality improvement initiative. In this role, she will act as the liaison between site participants and the QSRG research office. Ms. Bauer is also participating in the development of tools to aid collaborative participants in improving their unit’s culture and eliminating central line-associated blood stream infections and will participate in the evaluation of outcomes.

Sean M. Berenholtz, MD, MHS, FCCM

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:34:27 -0400

Sean M. Berenholtz, MD, MHS, FCCM is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology/Critical Care Medicine and Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
He earned his Masters degree in clinical investigation from the Johns Hopkins Graduate Training Program in Clinical Investigation at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research interests include applying clinical research methods to improve quality of care in the intensive care unit.
At Johns Hopkins, Dr. Berenholtz is a practicing anesthesiologist, critical care specialist, Director of Performance Improvement for the adult general and surgical oncology intensive care units, and Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins University Quality and Safety Research Group.

The author of more than 50 articles and chapters in the fields of patient safety, ICU care, evidence-based medicine, and the measurement and evaluation of safety efforts, Dr. Berenholtz he has worked with the VHA Health Foundation and JCAHO to develop quality measures for sepsis care, served as National Chair for the VHA’s Transformation of the ICU program, and as co-investigator for a statewide collaborative to improve ICU care in Michigan.
He currently serves as principal investigator for a statewide effort to improve perioperative care in Michigan and co-investigator to disseminate a successful program to improve culture and eliminate central line associated blood stream infections in over 18 states.

Julius Cuong Pham, MD, PhD

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:35:36 -0400

Julius Cuong Pham, MD, PhD is trained both in Emergency Medicine and Critical Care. He provides resident education and supervision in the Emergency Department as well as the Intensive Care Units. Because of this cross-training, he provides expertise in the management of critically ill patients in the Emergency Department.

Dr. Pham's area of research involves evaluating the quality and safety of Critical Care and Emergency Medicine. Recent publications involve studying ambulance diversion, ED pain management, rapid response teams, and error reporting systems. Current work involves studying ED medication errors, ED quality markers, culture of safety, organizational characteristics and quality, root cause event analysis, and United Kingdom error reporting systems.

Lisa H. Lubomski, PhD

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 10:29:19 -0400

Lisa H. Lubomski, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Quality and Safety Research Group (QSRG), Department of Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She has over 25 years of experience in clinical outcomes and health services research. Her areas of interest include improving patient safety and quality through large-scale collaborative efforts, teamwork and communication in the ICU and surgery, translating evidence into practice, human subjects and internal review, data collection and management, and team coaching. Dr. Lubomski’s current work includes developing methods and coaching for quality improvement collaborative/teams in surgery and ICUs, structured observations of teams in cardiac surgery, building capacity for knowledge translation, and training for teamwork and communication.

Dr. Lubomski’s role in the On the CUSP: STOP BSI project is as a QSRG faculty member and state leader. She is a leader on a number of QSRG-sponsored collaborations including MHA Keystone Surgery and MHA Keystone: ICU.

Jill A. Marsteller, PhD, MPP

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:38:10 -0400

Jill A. Marsteller, PhD, MPP has been involved in health services research for sixteen years and is currently an assistant professor of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She specializes in organizational behavior and in estimating the influence of organizational variables on quality improvement activities. Among her specific interests are the characteristics of effective quality improvement and health care teams, organizational readiness for change, and determinants of successful implementation, dissemination, and sustainability of quality improvement interventions.
Dr. Marsteller’s current work examines interdisciplinary teams in the context of quality improvement and care provision in Intensive Care Units, primary care practices, and acute care provided in the home.

Dr. Marsteller’s role in the On the CUSP: STOP BSI project is as a state leader. In a previous project she was one of three prinicipal investigators who both ran and evaluated a randomized controlled trial to implement and test the CUSP/ CLABSI intervention with 45 ICUs from two affiliated, faith-based hospital systems.

David J. Murphy, MD

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:30:07 -0400

David J. Murphy, MD is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Murphy is completing his Doctorate in Clinical Investigation from the Johns Hopkins Graduate Training Program in Clinical Investigation at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. His research applies clinical research methods towards improving the quality of care provided to critically ill patients by fostering the translation of research evidence into clinical practice. Current studies involve assessing changes in ICU practices over time and identifying factors which influence the consistent utilization of evidence-based therapies.

Dr. Murphy will contribute both clinical and research expertise to the On the CUSP: STOP BSI project in his role as a state leader and member of the project evaluation team.

Melinda Sawyer, RN, MSN

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:20:31 -0400

Melinda Sawyer, RN, MSN is a Senior Research Coordinator in the Quality and Safety Research Group (QSRG) and also serves as the Patient Safety Officer for the Department of Medicine of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She is a nurse by training and spent 9 years as a bedside nurse in progressive care and then in bed management and as a member of the hospital’s resuscitation team. Her clinical experiences led her to the field of patient safety and as a result, she recently completed a Masters of Nursing as a Clinical Nurse Specialist with a focus on Patient Safety. She began the first CUSP project in a non-intensive care unit at Johns Hopkins and has since participated in numerous quality improvement projects. She is most interested in multi-disciplinary collaboration as a tool to improve patient outcomes. To this end, she is currently starting an observational study to evaluate the effect of multidisciplinary resuscitation training on patient outcomes.

Melinda will contribute her clinical and organizational expertise in the On the CUSP: STOP BSI project as a QSRG research coordinator.

David Thompson, DNSc, MS, RN

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:21:47 -0400

David Thompson, DNSc, MS, RN is an assistant professor, clinical and health outcomes researcher. Dr Thompson is the Director of Patient Safety Education in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. His clinical background is in critical care nursing, with over 16 years’ experience, both as a nurse and researcher. He has spent 8 years teaching Adult Physical Health, a clinical rotation for undergraduate nurses. His research concentration is in ICU patient outcomes, patient safety and quality improvement initiatives, adverse event reporting, and multidisciplinary teamwork and safety curriculum development. As a clinician and researcher, he trains and collaborates directly with frontline caregivers in our statewide quality and safety evidence-based improvement initiatives.

Dr. Thompson is a recent recipient of a Robert wood Johnson Foundation Grant from the Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative (INQRI) program. He was principle investigator of this nursing driven intervention " Linking Care and Context of Care to Blood Stream Infection Reduction" This two year collaborative to reduce central line associated blood stream infections (CLABSI) involved Co-investigators in Social Psychology and Health Services Research. The collaborative involved 45 ICUs from 33 Hospitals in 12 states. This was a phased in Randomized Controlled trial where the intervention group (23 ICUS) received the evidence based practice bundle and Comprehensive Unit Safety Program (CUSP) while the other half of the ICUs served as controls for 8 months then adopted the intervention. This study was unique to nursing as it linked nursing care delivery to patient outcomes. Dr. Thompson served as primary clinical educator during this grant implementation and addressed all clinical questions during the duration of the study.

Dr. Thompson is currently a co- investigator serving as an expert in patient safety in a case- control retrospective analysis of adverse events in the Severely Mentally Ill (SMI) patient when hospitalized for somatic illness. Dr. Thompson is also serving as project director for an Interdisciplinary observational study assessing team process measures and their effectiveness in cardiac operating rooms.