Across academic medical centers and university campuses, top challenges faced by students, faculty, librarians, and clinicians include budget allocation for technological infrastructure, retention, and competence, lack of coordination and communication, increased enrollment and workload, time constraints, and variation in institutional support and mentorship.
The expert panel spoke about how they’ve solved these tough realities across the University of Alabama at Birmingham academic medical center and university campus with best practices for facilitating EBP, QI, and research innovation through three distinct workstreams: funding, launching, and sustaining innovation.
Each panelist described their vision, how it connects to a shared opportunity, and walked through their EBP, QI, and research innovation execution strategies. Additionally, our speakers performed a live demonstration of Ovid® Synthesis, the workflow solution that streamlines the execution of research project design, implementation, and evaluation, providing consistency with teaching, learning, and practice. The presentation concluded with a 15-minute Q&A session.
Panelists
Shea Polancich has been practicing in quality and patient safety for two decades. She is currently an Associate Professor and Assistant Dean at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) School of Nursing with a primary practice at the UAB Medical Center, Birmingham, Alabama as a director specializing in nursing improvement, innovation, and analytics. Formerly, her roles included the Director for Quality and Patient Safety at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Director of Data Analysis and Measurement at Texas Health Resources, NIH/NINR research intern, and health policy fellow at George Mason University. She has served on two expert panels for the NQF, and is a column editor for the Journal for Healthcare Quality®.
Peggy received a Masters in Library Science from the University of Alabama. She joined the UAB faculty in 2006 as the Electronic Resources Librarian; her job was to negotiate and contract all electronic resources for the UAB Academic Library. When the libraries merged in 2015, she moved to a teaching position in the Reference Department. In 2018, she was recruited to serve as the Head of the Acquisitions Department of the new joint technical services unit of UAB Libraries. She is now the Head of Resources Acquisitions & Metadata Services Department of UAB Libraries. Prior to joining UAB Libraries faculty, Peggy served as the Director of a Law Library in the private sector.
Dr. Hayes attended medical school at The Ohio State University and completed her Internal Medicine and Pediatrics residency at UAB. She is currently the Chief Quality Officer for UAB Hospital. She has a wealth of experience in quality improvement and patient safety, leading impactful initiatives across the care continuum. Dr. Hayes is also an educator with a dual appointment at the UAB School of Health Professions, in the Department of Health Services Administration. She is the Associate Medical Director of UAB Healthcare Quality and Safety Programs and teaches in the MSHQS, Executive MSHA, and Executive Doctoral Program in Administration-Health Services.
Moderator
Rachel Dicker is a Product Management Associate at Wolters Kluwer, Health Learning, Research & Practice. She is responsible for creating and implementing product strategies, innovation, and market outreach for new clinical research and information solutions. Her current focus is supporting academic and clinical leadership to teach, adopt, implement, and disseminate best practices to improve quality, safety, investments, and patient outcomes. She received the 2021 Health Learning, Research & Practice High Performance Recognition Award and the 2021 Wolters Kluwer Global Innovation Award.
