QSEA 2024 Instructors

All sessions are developed and led by experienced physicians known for their ability to practice and teach quality improvement and patient safety, mentor junior faculty, and guide educators in curriculum development.

DIRECTORS

Jennifer S. Myers, MD, FHM

Jennifer S. Myers, MD, FHM

Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine Associate Designated Institutional Official for Quality & Safety, Graduate Medical Education
Director of Quality & Safety Education, Perelman School of Medicine
University of Pennsylvania

Jennifer S. Myers, MD, FHM, is Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine and has been a faculty member and academic hospitalist at Penn for the last 14 years. She is the Director of Quality and Safety Education at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Associate Designated Institutional Official for Quality and Safety in Graduate Medical Education for the University of Pennsylvania Health System. She is also the Director of Training Programs in Penn’s Center for Healthcare Improvement and Patient Safety, which is a two-year research degree granting fellowship for post-graduate fellows or junior faculty. She previously served as the Patient Safety Officer for the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for 10 years, and it was during this time that her interest and work in medical education in healthcare quality and safety began.

In 2012, she led the development of the Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Quality and Safety Educators Academy — the first national faculty development program designed to provide faculty with educational and professional development strategies to help fill the current unmet need for quality and safety educators in our nations’ medical schools and teaching hospitals. Dr. Myers received her MD from Hahnemann University School of Medicine and completed her internship and residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She was a recipient of SHM’s Clinical Excellence award in 2010 and was named a Josiah Macy Faculty Scholar in 2011 for her innovations in medical education.

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Anjala Tess, MD, SFHM

Anjala Tess, MD, SFHM

Assistant Professor of Medicine
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Anjala Tess, MD, SFHM, has been involved in teaching and mentoring patient safety for more than 10 years. Dr. Tess and her team created an acclaimed quality improvement rotation for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) residents that was recently awarded second place for the Duncan Neushauer Curricular Innovation Award from the Academy of Healthcare Improvement. Under her direction, this elective has become a mandatory part of training for residents. Dr. Tess’ research on this program has shown that the curriculum has affected the culture of safety in the department. In addition she founded, recruited and trained patient safety core faculty to mentor the residents and has delivered many faculty development workshops in patient safety at the local, regional and national levels. In her role as Associate Program Director for Curriculum and Patient Safety in the Department of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, she has a unique responsibility to help encourage a culture of safety within the residency and link quality to educational initiatives.

She was appointed Director of Quality and Safety for GME at BIDMC and is responsible for supporting QI and safety education across all trainees at the medical center. She was recently named the Program Director for the Harvard Medical School Fellowship in Patient Safety and Quality. In addition Dr. Tess has a longstanding interest in curriculum development that she uses to teach hands-on workshops for faculty and residents.

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CORE FACULTY

Amber Bird, MD

Amber Bird, MD

Associate Professor of Medicine
Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

Amber Bird, MD is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the division of General Internal Medicine and serves as an Associate Program Director for the Internal Medicine residency program. She has a strong foundation in medical education, having completed a fellowship in Medical Education Research, Innovation, Teaching, and Scholarship (MERITS) at the University of Chicago, prior to joining faculty at Penn seven years ago, where her research focused on educational design and innovation. She directs the ambulatory education and the quality and safety education for the Internal Medicine residency program at Penn and is passionate about finding new ways to engage learners in both traditional and non-traditional methods of learning.

Dr. Bird was integrally involved in the development of structured evaluations to better assess learner progression to competency on ACGME milestones in the domains of systems-based practice and practice- based learning and improvement. She leads the quality improvement and population health education for where she works to address disparities in quality outcomes between our faculty and resident primary care panels. Additionally, she directs high-risk transitions both at the time of hospital discharge and during end-of-year resident transitions for the academic practices at Penn. Her research interests are focused on the use of quality improvement research methods to address inequities in the quality outcomes in the primary care setting. She serves on national committees devoted to quality, safety, and health equity including the Equity Matters ACGME National Equity Initiative, AAIM Health Disparities Collaborative, and the Patient Safety Collaborative for the ACGME.

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Sumant Ranji, MD, SFHM

Sumant Ranji, MD, SFHM

Professor of Clinical Medicine, University of California San Francisco
Division of Hospital Medicine, San Francsco General Hospital

Dr. Sumant Ranji is a Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California San Francisco and an academic hospitalist in the Division of Hospital Medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. He has led multiple educational programs in patient safety and quality improvement at UCSF, having previously served as Associate Program Director for Quality and Safety for the UCSF Internal Medicine residency program, and currently serves as the director of quality improvement and patient safety for the ZSFG Department of Medicine.

He has published widely on patient safety, with a particular focus on diagnostic errors and improving the safety of transitions in care. He is an Associate Editor of BMJ Quality and Safety and is a co-investigator on AHRQ-funded diagnostic error research projects. He is a member of the UCSF Academy of Medical Educators and remains active in teaching medical students and residents, as well as mentoring students, residents, and faculty interested in careers in health care systems improvement. He has been a QSEA faculty member since 2015.

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Brijen Shah, MD

Brijen Shah, MD

Assistant Professor
Mount Sinai Hospital

Brijen Shah, MD, is a board-certified internist, gastroenterologist and geriatrician who is an assistant professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center and the director of GME for faculty development, quality and patient safety. Dr. Shah is a graduate of the Warren Alpert School of Medicine and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Internal Medicine Residency. He is focused on designing curriculum and programs focused on quality improvement and patient safety for residents, faculty and front-line healthcare providers. He has been involved in the development of milestones and teaching products to meet the changes in graduate medical education and faculty development associated with this. Dr. Shah’s scholarship is focused on clinical competency assessment and program evaluation for faculty and chief resident training.

He has been the recipient of a Hartford Center of Excellence grant and a Hearst Foundation grant to train chief residents in geriatric principles, teaching and quality improvement. Dr. Shah serves as a QI coach in the VA program to teach QI to rural healthcare providers. He is a graduate of the Greater New York Hospital Association Clinical Quality Fellowship Program. He has published review articles and textbook chapters on fecal incontinence, constipation and colon cancer screening in the geriatric population. Outside of work, he enjoys traveling, cooking and hiking, and lives with his partner in New York City.

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Darlene Tad-y, MD

Darlene Tad-y, MD

Assistant Professor
University of Colorado

Darlene B. Tad-y, MD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Colorado. As the Director for GME Quality and Safety Programs, Dr. Tad-y has created GME-wide educational programs that integrate quality and safety initiatives into resident and fellow training across all specialties. Her work has included a Systems-Based M&M, a GME quality and safety bonus program for residents and fellows, and a small grants program for resident and fellow QI projects. She is also an Associate Program Director in the Internal Medicine Residency Program (IMRP) and is the Program Director for the Hospitalist Training Program.

She has been instrumental in the development of educational programs around quality improvement, patient safety and high-value care for the IMRP as well as the implementation of competency-based trainee evaluation for the Next Accreditation System. In addition, she is the Associate Director for Education in the hospital medicine group. In this role, she works closely with the program and service line directors to oversee the various educational programs offered by the hospitalist group, including the Advance Practice Fellowship, the Hospitalist Training Program and the Leaders Track, and the Young Hospitalist Academy, which includes the Hospital Medicine Sub-Internship, Health Innovations Scholars Program and the Leadership Education for Aspiring Doctors Program.

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Eric Warm, MD

Eric Warm, MD

Chair of Medical Education
University of Cincinnati

Dr. Warm, a board certified internist, holds the endowed Richard W. Vilter Chair of Medical Education at the University of Cincinnati. He completed both his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Cincinnati earning summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha honors. He completed his residency and chief residency there as well, joining the faculty in 1997. He is currently the Internal Medicine residency program director, the vice-chair for graduate medical education, and the medical director of the resident ambulatory practice. He served as the first chair of the ACGME Educational Innovations Project Council, and was the principle architect of the University of Cincinnati’s comprehensive redesign of internal medicine resident education.

Dr. Warm has received multiple teaching awards including the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada International Residency Educator of the Year Award, the ACGME Parker J. Palmer Courage to Teach Award, the APDIM Spotlight Innovator Award, the ACP Ohio Chapter Master Teacher Award, the University of Cincinnati’s A.B. Dolly Cohen Award, as well as teaching honors from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, and the Internal Medicine Residency. He has participated as core faculty in multiple learning collaboratives including the recent Professionals Accelerating Clinical and Educational Redesign (PACER) sponsored by the Macy Foundation and the Boards of Internal Medicine, Pediatrics and Family Medicine, and SHM’s Quality Safety Educator Academy. His academic interests include using assessment to create curricula and systems to improve education and care.

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Gabriella Sherman, MD, MBA

Gabriella Sherman, MD, MBA

Chief Medical Officer
HCA Los Robles Health System

Gabriella Sherman, MD, MBA is the Chief Medical Officer at HCA Los Robles Health System. In her role, she has oversight of all quality, regulatory, patient safety and medical staff operations. Prior to joining Los Robles, Dr. Sherman was the Vice President of Quality and Clinical Operations at Huntington Hospital, an affiliate of Cedars-Sinai Health System. She has extensive experience in graduate medical education having served as an Associate Program Director of the Internal Medicine Residency program and the Designated Institutional Officer at Huntington Hospital. Dr. Sherman has been recognized nationally for curricula in patient safety simulation and systems based M&M conferences. She has also led the development of a longitudinal patient safety and quality improvement curriculum and an enterprise wide just culture implementation. Since joining Los Robles in 2020, Dr. Sherman has launched 6 graduate medical education programs with plans to expand to more than 150 residency positions by 2025.

Dr. Sherman is passionate about training the next generation of physician leaders. In addition to her medical studies, she received her MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where she focused on finance and strategic management. She also holds an executive leadership coaching certification from UC Berkeley and is committed to developing authentic leaders in healthcare. She offers pro-bono coaching services to rising female leaders in an effort to advance young women in leadership positions.

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Joel Bradley, MD

Joel Bradley, MD

Assistant Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics Geisel
School of Medicine at Dartmouth

Joel Bradley, MD is board-certified in Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Pediatric Hospital Medicine. He is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Department of Medicine and Pediatrics, and the Director of Graduate Medical Education Quality and Safety Programs for the Dartmouth Health System. He works clinically as both an adult and pediatric hospitalist.

He is passionate about quality and safety educational program development and research that considers issues in ethics, health disparities, narrative medicine, qualitative methods in quality, and patient engagement in health system improvement. He has experience in national quality and safety curriculum development within the VA Chief Resident in Quality and Safety Program, and has done work in undergraduate, graduate, and faculty education in quality and safety throughout the Dartmouth Health System. He has particular interest in fostering growth in how clinicians communicate with patients and families after adverse events.
He derives joy from the exchange of ideas with thoughtful colleagues, and collaborating to improve how we educate interprofessional teams and achieve better outcomes for patients.

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Julie Oyler, MD

Julie Oyler, MD

Professor
Associate Program Director
University of Chicago Medicine

Julie Oyler, MD, is an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine. She has been an Associate Program Director for the Internal Medicine Residency program since 2006. She and her colleagues developed the Quality Assessment and Improvement Curriculum (QAIC), a two-year curriculum based on the American Board of Internal Medicine’s Practice Improvement Modules, which has been used to teach residents two core competencies — Practice-Based Learning and Improvement (PBLI) and Systems-Based Practice (SBP) — for the past 10 years.

Dr. Oyler is currently co-director for the Quality and Safety Track at the University of Chicago, Pritzker School of Medicine, which was developed to train medical student leaders in quality improvement. She is also the Associate Director of the Primary Care Group where she practices outpatient internal medicine on the south side of Chicago.

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Michelle-Marie Peña, MD

Michelle-Marie Peña, MD

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Emory University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta

Michelle-Marie Peña, MD is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Emory University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Dr. Peña received her medical degree from Harvard Medical School and completed her Pediatrics Residency, Chief Residency, and Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine Fellowship at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

She is currently completing a Master of Science in Health Policy Research with a concentration in health care quality and patient safety through the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Her primary interests include health equity research with a focus on using implementation science and equity-focused quality improvement to address inequities in perinatal and neonatal care.

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Ruth Franks Snedecor, MD

Ruth Franks Snedecor, MD

Assistant Professor and Associate Internal Medicine Program Director
University of Arizona College of Medicine- Phoenix

Ruth Franks Snedecor, MD, is an Academic Hospitalist at Banner-University Medical Center and Associate Program Director (APD) for the University of Arizona College of Medicine- Phoenix. She received her undergraduate and doctorate degrees from the University of Arizona in Tucson. In 2008, she completed her internal medicine residency and chief residency/jr. faculty at the same program she is now an APD. Recognizing the need for patient safety and quality improvement education and project mentorship, she went on to develop a curriculum for her residency program and joined the faculty for QSEA to help other programs in all fields of medicine better train their faculty, residents, students and fellows in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement (PSQI).

As Patient Safety Physician Lead for Banner-University Medical Center she is leading the way for residents and fellows to be involved in projects that are aligned with the institutional and system-wide initiatives to further improve the culture of safety across Phoenix and Tucson. Working closely with the Phoenix VA Healthcare System Chief Residents in Quality and Safety, she can further the impact that her learners are able to achieve by helping to expand the breadth of their impact nationwide. Developing faculty for other institutions and programs is a passion of hers and prompted her to co-direct a local faculty development course on Patient Safety and Quality Improvement. She has been involved in mentorship for over 100 different projects leading to improvements that impact millions of dollars in care and thousands of patients. A notable project published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, “Things We Do For No Reason” in 2019 worked to eliminate unnecessary contact precautions for historical MRSA and VRE infections. The timeliness of a discussion about utilizing PPE appropriately in the months before a world-wide pandemic was certainly incredible but would never have been accomplished if not for one of the residents that was inspired by her curriculum and mentorship. Dr. Franks’ mission is to make healthcare safer for every patient and teach future generations of physicians to do the same.

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