Fifteen years ago, if you wanted to carve out a career niche in patient safety, you had to be resourceful — and a tad lucky. I was a bedside nurse at Johns Hopkins then, and my manager was helping me find a track for promotion. Noting that I submitted far more adverse-event reports than anyone else, […]
Melinda Sawyer
About Melinda Sawyer
Melinda D. Sawyer, DrPH, MSN, RN, CNS-BC, became senior director of quality improvement for The Johns Hopkins Hospital in February 2018. Before then, she served as the Armstrong Institute’s director of patient safety and education.
Posts by Melinda Sawyer:
Patient Safety and Quality Champions Grow into Leaders

Jul 2, 2015 | posted by Melinda Sawyer | Organizational and Cultural Change, Preventing Patient Harm | 3 comments
For years, physician assistant Stephanie Figueroa has worked with our Emergency Department and the sickle cell care team to improve the treatment of patients with this disease who arrive with acute pain crisis. When beds were unavailable in the busy adult ED, these patients might spend hours in excruciating pain before our staff were able […]