As a second-year PHM fellow, I am able to explore the variety of areas within the scope of pediatric hospital medicine. I love caring for patients on both our acute care and complex care services, educating trainees and APPs, and building the unique care coordination skills we all gain through our PHM experiences. Non-clinically, I have a passion for education and am pursuing my Masters in Health Professions Education (MHPE) degree to strengthen my skills and directly lead curricular design throughout the courses. Finally, my scholarly interests lie in patient safety, and I am leading a multidisciplinary quality improvement effort to decrease errors in medication reconciliations for our patients with medical complexity.

Patient safety is an interest of mine that flourished during my last year of residency. I was saddened as a resident to see firsthand the result of errors with admission medication reconciliations, sometimes causing serious adverse effects in our patients. Specifically for children with medical complexity, I realized how much more at risk they are for errors to occur simply due to the number of chronic medications they have, many of which fall into the “high risk” category. Hospitals should be one of the safest places for patients, and unfortunately that is not currently true anywhere. I hope that through improvement science, we will see these medication error rates decrease significantly.

I would not be where I am today without my amazing mentors and sponsors encouraging me to follow my passions, creating the space for me to explore new and developing interests, and introducing me to opportunities I may not have otherwise thought I would be “qualified” for during my training and early career. My new role as the Social Media & Listserv Director for the AAP SOHM Women in PHM Sub-Committee was certainly the result of sponsorship by others!

I am a huge fan of Shirley Temples (extra cherries are a requirement) and Pittsford Dairy chocolate milk!