Dr. Stephan
The INTERACT team (l-r): Mark Williams, MD, MHM, professor and chief, and Kevin O’Leary, MD, MS, associate chief, division of hospital medicine, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago; Hiren Shah, MD, MBA, unit medical director; and nurse managers Sarah Buenaventura, RN, Patricia O’Sullivan, RN, and Kathryn O’Brien, Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
SHM presented its annual Awards of Excellence to five hospitalists and one hospital care team at its annual meeting May 18 just outside Washington, D.C. The awards honor the best practices in the growing specialty in such fields as quality improvement (QI), research, teaching, and teamwork.
“We are thrilled to honor this year’s award winners. Not only do they exemplify the very best in hospital medicine, they are also leading the way for thousands of other of hospitalists across the country,” says Jack Percelay, MD, SFHM, MPH, FAAP, chair of SHM’s Awards Committee. “These are not just personal achievements, they are achievements for the entire specialty—and they are a great representation of the depth and diversity of hospital medicine.”
The 2013 SHM Awards of Excellence recipients are:
Award for Clinical Excellence: Tierza M. Stephan, MD, FACP, SFHM, of Allina Health, for her work in creating new models for improving clinical practices for hospitalists. She has played a vital role in the development and maintenance of a number of tools designed to make a significant impact on the patient experience, including a “Top 10 List to Improve Communication with Patients,” and a monthly patient experience newsletter.
Award for Excellence in Research: Jeffrey Schnipper, MD, MPH, FHM of Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women’s Hospital, for his track record in uniting the often separate worlds of quality improvement (QI) and clinical trial research. In addition to earning eight Awards of Excellence from Partners Heatlhcare, he has been an investigator on 24 funded studies and served as the Principal Investigator SHM’s first large federal research grant, a $1.5 million grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ).
Award for Excellence in Teaching: Bradley Sharpe, MD, FACP, SFHM, of the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Sharpe earned this year’s award for his continued role in teaching at national meetings, presentations at the Academic Hospitalist Academy, multiple peer-reviewed publications, and scholarly work. He has also been recognized with the UCSF Academic Senate Distinction in Teaching Award.
Award for Outstanding Service in Hospital Medicine: Patrick J. Torcson, MD, MMM, SFHM, of St. Tammany Parish Hospital in Covington, La., for his advocacy on behalf of hospitalists and hospitals for quality and performance in health care. Dr. Torcson has distinguished himself as a national leader in hospital value-based purchasing and helped hospitalists better understand the concept through SHM’s Value-Based Toolkit.
Award for Excellence in Hospital Medicine for Nonphysicians: Jeanette Kalupa, DNP, ACNP-BC, APNP, of Hospitalists of Northern Michigan, for her work in improving outcomes for patients and implementing best-practice models in hospitalist programs. Those best-practice models have re-engineered patient-care processes, and her dedication to hospital medicine has paved the way for many other nonphysician providers in the specialty.
Award for Excellence in Teamwork in Quality Improvement: The INTERdisciplinary Approaches to Communication and Teamwork (INTERACT) team at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, for improving teamwork among physicians, nurses, and other healthcare providers. The INTERACT team focuses on one of the most common sites of hospital care: medical surgical units, where effective communication is critical but can be difficult.