Matthew Wysong, DO is a Pediatric Hospital Medicine Fellow in the Department of Pediatric Hospital Medicine and Jenna Merandi, PharmD is a Medication Safety Officer in the Department of Pharmacy. They applied for a Spark Award to support their project “Building a Safer Future: Evaluating Learning Teams in a Pediatric Hospital.”
“The overall goal of our project is to explore the implementation of Learning Teams a proactive Safety II-informed approach that brings multidisciplinary frontline staff together to strengthen operational knowledge and build safeguards through system-level change,” says Wysong. “We aim to understand how participation influences perceptions of empowerment, communication and safety culture and identify structural elements that make Learning Teams effective.”
The Spark Award will provide critical support for the team’s initial perception-based evaluation of Learning Teams. “These insights will help us understand both how participants experience Learning Teams and how feasible this approach is in practice,” adds Merandi. “Ultimately we hope this work lays the foundation for larger-scale research and system-level safety improvements.”
Funding will primarily support qualitative expertise from the Center for Biobehavioral Health including coding, thematic analysis and mentorship to guide interpretation and dissemination.
Congratulations to Matthew and Jenna on receiving a Spark Award and using it to advance proactive safety strategies in pediatric care.
Julie Johnson, PharmD, is the Director and Principal Investigator at The Ohio State University Clinical and Translational Science Institute.