Carayon honored with Eisenberg patient safety and quality award

The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum (NQF) on April 7, 2016, announced the 2015 recipients of the annual John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety and Quality Awards. The awards were presented at NQF’s Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. Pascale Carayon, the Procter & Gamble Professor in Total Quality in industrial and systems engineering, was the award’s only individual recipient.

The patient safety awards program, launched in 2002 by NQF and The Joint Commission, honors the late John M. Eisenberg, MD, MBA, former administrator of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Dr. Eisenberg was also a member of the founding board of directors of NQF. In his roles both as AHRQ administrator and chair of the federal government’s Quality Interagency Coordination Task Force, he was a passionate advocate for patient safety and health care quality, and personally led AHRQ’s grant program to support patient safety research.

Carayon was honored for her passion and far-reaching impact on patient care. She has advanced the field of patient safety and quality using human factors engineering (HFE) concepts and methods, and the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) model that grew out of HFE. Through her vision, research and work, Carayon has significantly enhanced the body of knowledge underlying innovative approaches to patient safety and improved patient safety efforts. She has also mentored new leaders in this arena both nationally and internationally.

Other awards/awardees included:

• Innovation in Patient Safety and Quality at the Local Level – Mayo Clinic Hospital-Rochester, Minnesota
• Innovation in Patient Safety and Quality at the National Level – Premier, Inc., Charlotte, North Carolina