(Smith and Carayon, 1989, 1995; Carayon and Smith, 2000)
The Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS), housed within CQPI, is a multidisciplinary initiative applying systems engineering, human factors engineering, and quality engineering approaches. This research empirically examines systems design, quality management, job design, and technology implementations that affect safety-related patient and organizational and/or staff outcomes (Carayon et al., 2006; Karsh, et al, 2006). SEIPS was one of 18 patient safety developmental centers originally funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the only such center located in a college of engineering.
SEIPS draws on its own members’ expertise, scientific literature, and research findings to develop educational programs on patient safety issues. The educational programs are aimed internally for use in developing a coherent research team and externally for medical consumers, medical providers, and the research community. Ties to local medical delivery systems have been formalized. A core team, research affiliates, community affiliates, and student affiliates are part of the SEIPS structure. Oversight and direction is provided to SEIPS by the core team comprised of representatives from the UW School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) – Maureen Smith, MD, PhD, MPH who functions as the liaison between SEIPS and ICTR-CAP (see below for the description), Tosha Wetterneck, MD, MS, Caprice Greenberg, MD, MPH, Michelle Kelly, MD, Nasia Safdar, MD, Amye Tevaarwerk, MD, Sharon Weber, MD, Amy Liepert, MD, Brian Patterson, MD, Luke Funk, MD, MPH, and Carla Pugh, MD, PhD; School of Nursing – Linsey Steege, PhD, Roger L. Brown, PhD, Barbara King, PhD, RN, and Patricia Brennan, PhD, RN,(also College of Engineering); School of Pharmacy – Michelle Chui, PharmD, PhD ; College of Engineering – Pascale Carayon, PhD, Douglas Wiegmann, PhD, Ann Schoofs Hundt, PhD, Peter Hoonakker, PhD, Mary Sesto, PhD, John Lee, PhD, Jingshan Li, PhD, Nicole Werner, PhD, and Vicki Bier, PhD, who, as chair of the department, functions as the liaison between SEIPS and Industrial and Systems Engineering faculty.