Patient Safety Fellows Dive into the Future of Safer Care
Type: News
Focus Area: Workforce Development
The 2026 patient safety fellows, representing 10 universities and 15 different fields of study, and JHF staff.
What if health care was designed to prevent harm before it ever occurred? That question brought together 23 emerging healthcare professionals this summer to reimagine what safer care could look like—and how to build it.
The 22nd annual Patient Safety Fellowship, hosted by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF), concluded July 28 with multidisciplinary groups presenting their ideas for how the fictional and aspirational “Ambition Health System” — where safety is intentionally designed into every decision, technology, and patient interaction rather than addressed after something goes wrong — could transform everything for health care’s key stakeholders.
Throughout the fellowship, participants explored what it takes to build a safer healthcare system from the ground up. Sessions explored systems thinking, direct-to-consumer technology, data for improvement, human factors engineering, large-scale health system technology, the business case for patient safety, and simulation-based learning before culminating in group presentations that translated those lessons into practical solutions.
"Coming in as someone with a data science background and no clinical experience, I wasn't sure what to expect from this fellowship. But from the very first session, it clicked for me in a way I didn't anticipate. Learning about the CASH frameworks gave me a completely new lens for thinking about what good data work in health care actually means. And I didn't expect how much I would learn just from being in the room with everyone. The fellows, the speakers, the conversations between sessions, hearing about people's journeys into patient safety, made me feel like I belonged here even without a clinical background. It reminded me that patient safety is not just a clinical problem. It is a systems problem, and that is exactly where data science fits in.”
The fellowship convened students and early-career professionals with diverse academic background, recognizing that safer health care cannot be built by any single discipline. Engineers, nurses, public health professionals, physicians, AI specialists, healthcare administrators, and data scientists each brought unique perspectives to the same challenge, learning to approach patient safety as a systems problem requiring collaborative solutions.
This year’s fellowship was guided by the Coalition for Advancing Safer Healthcare (CASH), a national initiative working to define what an ideal yet feasible “Ambition Health System” could look like. National experts in patient safety shared insights into the recommendations just published in the Safe By Design white paper, including David Classen, MD, University of Utah; Robert El-Kareh, MD, UC San Diego; Tejal Gandhi, MD, MPH, CPPS, Press Ganey; Michael McShea, MS, MBA, Johns Hopkins University; Paul Phrampus, MD, UPMC; Raj Ratwani, PhD, MedStar Health; Michael Rosen, PhD, MA, Johns Hopkins University; and Ken Segel, Value Capture.
"Through the Patient Safety Fellowship, I have gained invaluable insight into current patient safety practices and the Foundation's efforts to improve both patient safety and overall health outcomes," said Katie Walters, an MPH student at the University of Pittsburgh. "The fellowship has given me the opportunity to learn from leading patient safety experts from across the country and engage in meaningful discussions about emerging technologies, and how they can be implemented to enhance patient safety while preserving patient privacy and confidentiality. This opportunity has equipped me with practical skills and a deeper understanding that I will carry forward into my future career."
At the finale, one group reimagined a day in the life of a bedside nurse, and another redesigned the experience of a patient navigating care. The fellow groups detailed how patient safety, and consequently everything else, is totally transformed thanks to the CASH recommendations. Other groups explored how executives, physicians, and health system boards would make decisions differently in a healthcare system like Ambition where safety is embedded from the outset.
