Quality Improvement: A Tool for Transformation

Russell Migita, MD, is a practicing physician and assistant clinical director in the emergency department at Seattle Children's Hospital. Dr. Migita is the co-director of education at the UW Medicine Center for Scholarship in Patient Care, Quality & Safety, where he co-directs a certificate program in quality and safety. He has trained hundreds of health care staff in the WWAMI region and led dozens of QI efforts using A3 methodology, Six-Sigma tools, Model for Improvement, Lean, and Lean facility design.

Nicholas Meo, MD, is a hospitalist and associate medical director for quality and safety at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. As an educator, he has developed curriculum and taught hundreds of medical students, residents, faculty, and staff in principles of quality improvement and patient safety.

Sabreen Akhter, DO is a pediatric emergency physician and Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Washington Department of Pediatrics/Seattle Children’s Hospital. She has been active in leading efforts to center equity, justice, and anti-racism in her work through leading a track for pediatric residents focused on health equity and justice, leading the EDI Committee for faculty in the Department of Pediatrics, as well as leading committees focused on improving equity within the Division of Emergency Medicine. She is also interested in narrative writing and using storytelling for advocacy and has been published in The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Seattle Times, and others.

Emily Hartford, MD, MPH, is a is an assistant professor of pediatric emergency medicine at the University of Washington. She provides clinical care and teaching in the Seattle Children’s Hospital ER. She conducts research using quality improvement methodologies to improve equity for patients and families presenting for emergency care, particularly for patients with different languages for care and racial/ethnic backgrounds. She teaches and works on EM curriculum for the Pediatric Emergency and Critical Care fellowship at the University of Nairobi in Kenya and is a part of a working group to implement pediatric teaching curricula with the African Federation of EM. She is also a faculty director for the UW resident pathway in community/global health and advocacy.