Harkness Project Title: Innovations in Inter-Disciplinary Health Service Delivery Models in Acute Care in the U.S. and Canada: Impacts on Patient Safety and Quality Worklife

Mentor: Maureen Bisognano

Biography at time of Harkness Fellowship: Patricia O'Connor, RN, M.Sc.N, a 2008–09 Canadian Harkness Associate in Health Care Policy and Practice, is associate director of nursing, neurosciences and co-director of the best practices program in the department of nursing at the McGill University Health Centre. She is also an assistant professor in the school of nursing at McGill University and a guest faculty member of the Canadian Patient Safety Institute's Safer Health Care Now campaign. She is a Certified Health Executive, Past President of the Academy of Canadian Executive Nurses, a Board member of a number of health care organizations, and a founding member of the Canadian Health Leadership Network and the Consortium for Nursing Research and Innovation. From 2004–06, she held a CHSRF Fellowship in Executive Training in Research Application, and she has expertise in sustainability of knowledge transfer processes, business case development for reduction of adverse events, development of high performance teams and performance benchmarking. O'Connor's primary research focuses on safety issues in health care delivery (patient, practitioner, and system level outcomes) and her work has been published in journals such as Health care Quarterly. She holds a master's degree in nursing from McGill University.

Current Position: Director of Nursing, McGill University Health Center. (Updated August 2010)

E-mail: patty.oconnor@muhc.mcgill.ca

Harkness Related Publications

Wong, CA., H. Laschinger, H., GG Cummings, G.G., L. Vincent, L., P. O’Connor, P. "Decisional Involvement of Senior Nurse Leaders in Canadian Acute Care Hospitals." Journal of Nursing Management, 2010 Mar; 18(2):122-33.