We all are impacted by, and reap the benefits of, medical research discoveries. From over-the-counter drugs, to healthcare policies and educational interventions, many of these advancements are a result of incredible feats, decades of work, and sometimes serendipitous events. Join us as we sit down with Harvard researchers to discuss these captivating behind-the-scenes stories of research.
June 20, 2024
Improving Patient Safety
“The National Academy of Medicine said that every American, at least once in their lifetime, will likely experience a diagnostic error, some of which will have devastating consequences,” says Christina Cifra, MD, MS, of Boston Children’s Hospital. In this episode, Cifra discusses her work as a health services researcher focusing on patient safety and ways to prevent diagnostic error.
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Christina Cifra, MD, MS, is an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a health services and patient safety researcher in the field of diagnostic excellence. She is a practicing pediatric intensivist in the Division of Medical Critical Care at Boston Children’s Hospital. Cifra’s current work focuses on diagnostic error epidemiology, the role of diagnostic uncertainty in critical care diagnosis, improving diagnostic process handoffs for interfacility transfers to the ICU, and developing electronic feedback systems between pediatric intensive care units (PICU) and frontline clinical settings. She has published foundational studies on diagnostic error in the PICU and has proposed a unified research agenda for diagnostic excellence in critical medicine. Cifra completed a pediatric critical care fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and was a resident scholar at the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.