Sentara leaders awarded for commitment to quality and patient safety

Sentara’s chief medical officer and chief nursing officer were awarded the 2024 Senior Leader Quality and Patient Safety Award by the Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association (VHHA) to recognize their powerful partnership and commitment to patient safety.

Joel Bundy, MD, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer and Mary Morin, RN, Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer recently received the joint award. VHHA said the joint award is recognition of Bundy and Morin’s physician/nursing partnership that demonstrates “the power of dyad leadership.”

 “Your continuous support of a culture of safety and high reliability has been consistent and palpable – you both show up,” said Abraham Segres, VHHA Vice President for Quality and Patient Safety. “You set relevant quality and safety improvement goals for your organization and ensure that staff have the resources to achieve those goals.”

Segres also commended Bundy and Morin for their active leadership with VHHA’s statewide safety initiatives. He recalled a phone call from Mary Morin in the earliest stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, calling on VHHA to form a task force to help all Virginia hospitals respond well to the emerging threat, and then offering to help.

“It takes everybody in this health care system to make our environment safe for consumers and our staff,” Morin said. “We encourage everyone to speak up for safety to help us make Sentara even safer.” Speak up for Safety is a VHHA initiative that recognizes providers who intervene in situations to prevent harm.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) shares the estimate of 250,000-400,000 deaths yearly in the United States due to errors or preventable harm. Everyone, at some point in their life, interacts with the health care system, and preventing harm in health care is a public health concern.

National Patient Safety Awareness Week is a global campaign, sponsored by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, recognized every year in March. This year, Patient Safety Awareness Week will be celebrated March 10-16 with the theme Safer Together.

Sentara made a systemwide commitment to consumer and staff safety in 2002 by being one of the first health care organizations in the country to adopt a culture of safety. A multidisciplinary task force consulted the nuclear power industry, and commercial and naval aviation to identify behavior-based expectations which staff and providers use to lessen the chance of human error. These behaviors became the Sentara Safety Habits and accompanying Error Prevention Tools. This revolutionary approach to safety earned Sentara the Quest for Quality Prize from the American Hospital Association in 2004 and other peer recognitions followed.

“We want to thank the thousands of people who work at the bedside – the sharp end of care – who provide incredible quality and safety for our patients and communities,” Bundy added. “It’s an honor to receive this award on their behalf.”