This week on COVID Chronicles, Komal Bajaj, Chief Quality Officer at NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi, joins us to discuss how four fundamental principles from the world of quality and safety are informing their efforts as they change procedures during the COVID-19 surge in New York City.

Komal Bajaj, MD, MS-HPEd is Chief Quality Officer at NYC Health + Hospitals/Jacobi, catalyzing quality improvement transformation through culture change and data-driven decisions. She is an Associate Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and serves as the Clinical Director of Simulation for NYC Health + Hospitals, the largest municipal health system in the United States.  

Dr. Bajaj attended medical school at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and completed her training in Obstetrics & Gynecology at McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University. Following residency, she completed a fellowship in Reproductive Genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and continues to deliver cutting-edge reproductive genetics care in the Bronx. Sparked by desire to incorporate contemporary educational theory in her quality improvement work, she completed a Masters in Health Professional Education from the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions.

Dr. Bajaj has is nationally and internationally speaker on the use of simulation to advance healthcare quality and safety. Her scholarly interests include defining innovative approaches to embed simulation within the clinical environment, developing sustainable programs to build agency in healthcare teams, and characterizing the emerging role of debriefing in healthcare quality/safety. She sits on the Advisory Board for the Foundation for Healthcare Simulation Safety and on the External Advisory Board for the Joan H. Marks Graduate Program in Human Genetics of Sarah Lawrence College.

Learn more at http://www.harvardmedsim.org.