Lauren E. Benishek, Ph.D.

Lauren E. Benishek was an Assistant Professor at the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality and in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, first joining the Armstrong Institute as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 2014 before advancing to Assistant Professor in 2016.

Lauren was an earnest, helpful and kind colleague and friend to the people that made up the Armstrong Institute. She believed that small actions have big impacts. This belief was embodied in her approaches to show how all people are important and in her efforts to nurture a kinder culture valuing personal meaning, well-being and psychological safety for all. Lauren found that authentic, high-quality relationships affect individuals and efficiencies in healthcare communities. Further, she observed that better interpersonal dynamics and teamwork connectivity were rooted in relationships that engender feelings of safety and of trust.

Quintessentially Lauren, written above her desk were the words: “To help others find balance, joy, resilience and calm, start where you are, use what you have and do what you can.”

Accordingly, Lauren’s work supported high-quality, safe patient care through understanding and optimizing workplace conditions to improve the lives of healthcare professionals, with a focus on interpersonal and team-based dynamics, safety and workforce well-being and engagement. Moreover, she wanted to understand the complicated interplay between systems innovations, the impacts of innovations on personal connections and on individuals and patient safety. In national and multinational collaborations with researchers and front-line operations members, she developed, implemented and demonstrated the effectiveness of a variety of complementary patient safety interventions and workforce well-being interventions with the goal of delivering the highest-quality care. This work extended to a number of training programs aimed at improving clinician and staff knowledge, skills and attitudes about safety science, teamwork and clinical best practices. Collectively, her efforts highlighted that providing safe and effective care to patients requires physically and psychologically healthy healthcare workers.

Her work has resulted in over scholarly 50 articles published in leading journals, including the Journal of Applied Psychology, Frontiers of Psychology, the Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, JAMA Surgery and Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. To support her valuable work, she received funding from local, national and international sources including the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Dutch Society of Surgeons.