Dr. John Walsh Receives MGH Annual Cooper Patient Safety Award

Dr. Robert Peterfreund (right), Department Quality Assurance Committee chair, presents the award to Dr. John Walsh.

At its graduation ceremony on June 16, the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine (DACCPM) of the Massachusetts General Hospital awarded its third annual Jeffrey B. Cooper Patient Safety Award, which is named in honor of the APSF executive vice president. This year the award was given to Dr. John Walsh for his many enhancements and applications of the department’s anesthesia information system, which he has spearheaded since its inception over 10 years ago, and for his dedication to the teaching of safe medication administration practices within the department. The entire department votes on this award each year, based on the following solicitation email:

“This award honors the dedication and contributions of Dr. Jeffrey B. Cooper to patient safety. Dr. Cooper is a Professor of Anaesthesia, Harvard Medical School, and the Executive Director of the Center for Medical Simulation. The intent is to annually recognize the exemplary contributions of an individual member of the department to the provision of safe patient care. Another goal of the award is to foster a culture of safety among the members of the department:
What can you do to promote safe patient care?”

Eligible persons included members of the DACCPM attending staff, clinical fellows, residents, nurse anesthetists, critical care/monitoring nurses, anesthesia technicians, and biomedical engineers. Candidates were nominated based upon how their practice exemplifies Dr. Cooper’s ideals for patient safety, their recognition of a significant patient safety problem, their proposal and/or implementation of a solution to a patient safety issue, and other contributions to patient safety.

Congratulations to Dr. Walsh for the honor of receiving this award for his contributions to anesthesia patient safety.

Editor’s note:

If your department or organization recognizes patient safety efforts with an award of any kind, please let the APSF Newsletter know.