The Department of Pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine announced that Beverly Brozanski, MD, has accepted the position of professor in the Department of Pediatrics, division of newborn medicine, effective this fall. She will also be appointed as the vice chair of quality and safety for the Department of Pediatrics and the vice president of pediatric quality improvement and patient safety for BJC HealthCare and St. Louis Children’s Hospital (SLCH). In her combined roles, Dr. Brozanski and her associates in the BJC HealthCare Center for Clinical Excellence, St. Louis Children’s Hospital and the Department of Pediatrics will develop system-wide efforts in quality improvement and standards of care within and across disciplines as well as pediatric initiatives throughout BJC and SLCH systems.
Dr. Brozanski is currently a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the medical director of the NICU at the UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. She is an Institute of Healthcare Improvement advisor and co-leader of the continuous initiatives for quality improvement for the Children’s Hospitals Neonatal Consortium. In this role, she has organized several national and international neonatal quality improvement projects to reduce CLABSIs, improve post-operative handoffs, reduce post-operative hypothermia and work toward zero harm in the perioperative period. These collaboratives have included structured education in QI learning and team engagement directed to local center participants. She has also presented national workshops on the NICU handoff process.
Dr. Brozanski was a member of the founding centers of the Children’s Hospitals Neonatal Consortium (CHNC), a not-for-profit quality outcome organization for neonatology leaders to improve care for infants in children’s hospitals Level 4 NICUs. She is a member of the board and executive committee of this organization of now 34-member institutions dedicated to capturing data elements, practices and outcomes for this unique population of infants. She is an active member of the planning committee of the annual CHNC Quality and Research Symposium.
Dr. Brozanski has mentored multiple residents, fellows, junior faculty, nurses and allied health professionals in process improvement projects. Her students have won both local and national awards. Also, she has organized local and system-wide improvement projects in antibiotic stewardship, breastfeeding rates, neonatal abstinence management, infection prevention, accidental extubation, discharge planning and medication errors. Her success in process improvement is related to her ability to engage multi-disciplinary teams and frontline care providers. Her clinical care compassion leadership style has earned her multiple awards and helped establish her as a leader in her field.
