LEARN Team Biographies

Donna Woods, EdM, PhD
Jane Holl, MD MPH
Jon Young
Robert Wears, MD
Ellen Schwalenstocker, PhD
Sally Reynolds, MD

Donna Woods 
Donna Woods, EdM, PhD, is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Healthcare Studies, Feinberg School of Medicine and The Graduate School at Northwestern University.  Dr. Woods’ research has focused on advancing the epidemiology of pediatric patient safety risk, developing theory to facilitate effective intervention and the translation of methods from other high reliability industries for risk assessment and safety improvement in healthcare.  Dr. Woods founded and Co-Chairs the Chicago Pediatric Patient Safety Consortium, a consortium of six hospitals with pediatric services seeking to understand generalizable patient safety risks in pediatrics and design solutions that are effectively customized for pediatric medical care.  Dr. Woods has focused on clinician to clinician communication as a contexts leading to patient safety risk and has developed effective interventions to address these risks.^{1 2}  Dr. Woods established and validated the “Child-Specific Risk Factors” to guide effective pediatric customization of patient safety interventions and safe pediatric medical care design.³  The pediatric patient safety taxonomy developed by Dr. Woods is currently being applied to reported incidents related to pediatric emergency care at 17 institutions across the country.⁴ 

Dr. Woods has published many papers focused on pediatric patient safety and has been awarded grants from federal agencies and private foundations to further her investigations.  Dr. Woods is a Co-Principal Investigator with Dr. Holl on several federal and foundation funded pediatric patient safety projects currently including: 1) the AHRQ funded Leveraging Existing Assessments of Risk Now (LEARN) for Pediatric Patient Safety also funded by AHRQ; 2) Pediatric Emergency Transfers project funded by AHRQ and 3) Pediatric Patient Safety: Improving Clinician Communication, funded by the Michael Reese Health Trust, Chicago, IL, The project is described above in detail (see section C.1.).  Drs. Woods and Holl just completed a two-year project, Patient Safety: Strategies for Improving Pediatric Clinician Communication.

Dr. Woods was honored with three distinct awards for “significant and innovative” health services research (2002, 2003, and 2006).  Drs. Woods and Holl also received the 2006 Institute of Medicine (Chicago), Chicago Patient Safety Forum, and Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute Recognition in Patient Safety Award for their work as Co-chairs of the Consortium.

Dr. Woods and Dr. Kevin B. Weiss are Co-Directors of the newly created Master’s Program in Healthcare Quality and Patient Safety at Northwestern University.  Dr. Woods is also an Executive Committee Member of the Northwestern Center for Patient Safety, a joint endeavor of Northwestern Memorial Hospital, the Feinberg School of Medicine and Northwestern University.⁵

Dr. Woods served as a pediatric patient safety expert to advise the Joint Commission Resources on their program to advance pediatric patient safety learning and improvement. She has also been an expert advisor on the American Academy for Pediatrics Safer for Kids Initiative and provided pediatric patient safety consultation on the Florida Code 15 adverse event report analysis.  Dr. Woods is a current Steering Committee member of the Chicago Patient Safety Forum, the regional safety coalition for the Chicago area, and serves on its Scientific Council.  Dr. Woods is faculty for the American Association of Medical Colleges, Academic Rapid Response Team Learning Collaborative and Academic Chronic Care Collaboratives.  Dr. Woods was faculty for the Illinois Hospital Association, Clinician Communication and Hand-offs Collaborative.

Dr. Woods completed her doctorate in Health and Social Policy at the Brandeis University, Heller School for Social Policy and Management and received a Masters of Education from the Harvard University.  Dr. Woods worked as Senior Policy Advisor on Health Care Quality for the state of Massachusetts and led a team to develop a system of quality measurement and improvement for all of the state’s acute-care hospitals.


Jane Holl  [back to top]
Dr. Holl is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine and a Faculty Associate at the Institute for Healthcare Studies, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University.  Dr. Holl is currently serving as the Interim Director of the Institute for Healthcare Studies.  Dr. Holl is a board certified pediatrician who practices primary care pediatrics at Children’s Memorial Hospital (CMH).    

Since, October 2004, Dr. Holl has been the Medical Director for Patient Safety at CMH, a free-standing children’s hospital with over 1,100 pediatric specialists focusing on 70 specialties.  The institution has 270 in-patient beds and had over 9,000 inpatient admissions and 366,000 outpatient visits in 2006.  Dr. Holl leads the Safety Quality Learning Center, comprised of three full-time Patient Safety Managers who review and follow-up on safety events reported in an electronic reporting system.  In this capacity, Dr. Holl has led multi-disciplinary teams at CMH in several FMEAs on several topics. 

Dr. Holl is the Principal Investigator on the recently awarded National Children’s Study, a 21 year longitudinal study of children’s health that will follow 2,000 children in the greater Chicago area.  

Dr. Holl is a Co-Principal Investigator with Dr. Woods on several federal and foundation funded pediatric patient safety projects currently including: 1) the AHRQ funded Leveraging Existing Assessments of Risk Now (LEARN) for Pediatric Patient Safety; 2) the AHRQ funded Pediatric Emergency Transfers project; and 3) Pediatric Patient Safety: Improving Clinician Communication, funded by the Michael Reese Health Trust, Chicago, IL, The project is described above in detail (see section C.1.).  Drs. Woods and Holl just completed a two-year project, Patient Safety: Strategies for Improving Pediatric Clinician Communication.  Dr. Holl is a Co-Investigator on an AHRQ-funded study, Simulation–based Training Program to Augment EMR-based Handoff Tool (1 U18 HS016640-01; PI, Vozenilek, J) to implement a patient hand-off tool, for use by resident physicians in EDs, using the electronic medical record. 

Drs. Holl and Woods received the 2006 Institute of Medicine – Chicago, Chicago Patient Safety Forum, Otho S. A. Sprague Memorial Institute Recognition in Patient Safety Award for their work as co-Chairs of the Chicago Pediatric Patient Safety Consortium.  Dr. Holl is Principal Investigator of a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Health Services Research funded by an Institutional National Research Service Award (HS-03-001) and an Advanced Rehabilitation Research Training Project in Rehabilitation Services Research Award (H133P030002; PI, Heinmann, A) and a Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Measuring Rehabilitation Outcomes and Effectiveness Award (H133B040032; PI, Heinemann, A) from the National Institute of Disability and Rehabilitation Research. 

Jon Young  [back to top]
Mr. Young is a Senior Scientist, System Safety and Risk Assessment, Environmental Technology Division, at the Pacific Northwest National Labor­atory (PNNL).  Mr. Young has experience with the development and dissemination of hazard assessment and process improvement methodologies for over 20 years.  After participating in a study sponsored by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to assess the risk of nuclear power plant accidents, he developed and implemented an approach based on the Probabilistic Safety Assessment (PSA) method to evaluate changes to plant systems and processes (“back fits”) to support selection of the best approach to improving safety.i]  In addition, Mr. Young developed training materials for the use of qualitative and quantitative hazard analysis methods.ii  As part of the work supporting the three local hospitals in the Tri-Cities, Washington area, he assisted in the development of the healthcare application of the FMECA method and training hospital staff in its use.iii]  In addition to being the project manager for the FMECA support to the local hospitals in the Tri-Cities, Washington area.  

Mr. Young is currently the project manager for a multi-million dollar set of tasks providing nuclear safety and licensing support to the contractors at the US Department of Energy Hanford site near Richland, Washington.  Work accomplished under these tasks includes performing hazard analysis to identify the risks associated with failures of systems, facilities, activities and processes for storing, recovering, and dispositioning nuclear waste at the site.  The hazard analysis identifies what can go wrong (e.g., potential failures), the likelihood of the failures, and the outcomes (e.g., consequences of failures).  This information is used to identify the risk of failures and identify controls (e.g., interventions) to prevent or mitigate the effects of these failures using US Department of Energy control decision criteria based on the likelihood and outcomes of failures.  After identification of the control strategy, the systems, facilities, activities and processes are reanalyzed to determine if an adequate set of controls has been identified.  This work is included in the safety basis for the systems, facilities, activities and processes and supports 1) the design of systems, facilities, and procedures; and 2) the evaluation of incidents during operations.


Sally Reynolds, MD  [back to top]
Dr. Reynolds serves as the Medical director of the Emergency Department at Children’s Memorial Hospital. She is also an associate professor of Pediatrics for Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. Dr. Reynolds’ special interests include abdominal pain, pediatric advanced life support, professional liability and disaster planning. She attended medical school at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine and completed her postgraduate training with Northwestern University Medical School/Children's Memorial Hospital. Dr. Reynolds is Board Certified in Pediatric Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics.


Robert Wears, MD  [back to top]
Dr. Wears practices as a Critical Care Surgeon at Emergency Medicine Specialists of Jacksonville and the University of Florida, Jacksonville. He attended Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completed his residency with Emergency Medicine at Jacksonville Health Education Programs (JHEP), Jacksonville, Florida.

Ellen Schwalenstocker, PhD MBA  [back to top]
Dr. Schwalenstocker is the Director of Child Health Quality for the National Association of Children's Hospitals and Related Institutions (NACHRI).

Michael Ellwood MS PA MBA  [back to top]
Associate Director, Quality Advocacy and Measurement

Olivia Ross, MPH  [back to top]
Project Coordinator, Northwestern University

Anna Torricelli, BS  [back to top]
Research Coordinator, Northwestern University