Shaista Ahmed, MBBS, MPH

Dr. Shaista Ahmed is Assistant Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her area of clinical expertise include inpatient geriatric medicine and patient safety; her main interest is in improving the outcome of older adults who get admitted to the hospital with geriatric syndromes, with focus on safe discharges, and avoidance of iatrogenic complications, through teaching and collaboration both locally and internationally.

Dr. Ahmed earned her medical degree from People Medical College, Pakistan. She completed her internal medicine residency from Oklahoma State University- Tulsa Campus, and MPH degree from Emory University. She joined Johns Hopkins Geriatrics fellowship program in 2017 and completed two year training on clinician-educator track. She also completed an MAS in patient safety and healthcare quality from Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD.

She joined geriatric division after completing fellowship as clinical associate in July 2019 and later transitioned to assistant professor in July 2021. In this new role, she helped establish the geriatric cognitive-behavioral service for inpatient and geriatric emergency department consult service. She is serving as the geriatric–liaison for the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP)’s Geriatric Emergency Department Accreditation application from our hospital. She is a member of Age-Friendly Collaborative Education Workshop, focusing on the MIND part of 4-M of IHI- Age-Friendly initiative at JH Bayview campus 

Prior to joining the division of geriatrics as a geriatric fellow, Dr. Ahmed acquired clinical and leadership experience in internal medicine while working in three different states in the US and internationally in the United Arab Emirates. During that time, Dr. Ahmed has served as clinic director for an internal medicine practice, providing primary care and hospital follow-up for patients primarily discharged from St. Joseph Regional Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She also served as Director of Admission and Transfer Center at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City (2011-2017); in this role, she supervised all patient transfers from different parts of the UAE and borders of Oman and other Gulf countries. She also served as Associate Program Director of the internal medicine residency program (2012-2017) at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City, Abu Dhabi, UAE. In this role, Dr. Ahmed helped the program successfully attain ACGME-International accreditation.

Her current research interest is to improve delirium management in the inpatient setting by redesigning training module for the patient safety attandants/ sitters who provide care of older adults with delirium or other neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) of dementia and related disorders in the inpatient setting.