Patient Safety Officer

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JOB SUMMARY: The Patient Safety Officer serves as the organization's primary resource for patient safety program development, implementation, and sustainment across all MAHEC clinical departments. This role is responsible for building and maintaining a culture of safety through systematic event reporting, trend analysis, and improvement/cultural initiatives. Working collaboratively with clinical leadership, risk management, and front-line staff, the Patient Safety Officer facilitates root cause analyses, develops corrective action plans, and ensures lessons learned are disseminated across the organization. This position plays a critical role in establishing MAHEC as an organization committed to the pursuit of zero harm. The ideal candidate combines healthcare quality improvement expertise with strong analytical skills, systems thinking, and the ability to engage staff at all levels in safety improvement work. This role requires someone who can build trust, foster psychological safety for reporting, and translate complex safety science concepts into practical workflows. SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES: Event Reporting & Analysis Reviews and prioritizes patient-safety events each day, ensuring timely triage of all incidents assigned by Risk Management Facilitates root cause analyses (RCAs) for serious harm events at the direction of the Medical Review Committee, near-misses with high severity potential, and recurrent event patterns Provides consultation to assigned task owners on patient safety event follow-up for lower-severity safety events Utilizes the patient safety platform tracking system to monitor completion and effectiveness of corrective actions Safety Program Development Reviews, develops and maintains patient safety policies, procedures, and standard work documents Conducts proactive risk assessments using FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) methodology for high-risk processes Coordinates recall management for medications, clinical supplies, and equipment in collaboration with Pharmacy, clinical operations, and Risk Management Data Analysis & Reporting Analyzes safety event data to identify trends, patterns, and systemic vulnerabilities Prepares safety reports for the Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Executive Safety Committee, and Quality & Safety Committee Tracks and reports patient safety program performance metrics Culture & Training Promotes a Just Culture approach that balances learning with appropriate accountability Develops and delivers patient safety training for staff, including new employee orientation content as needed Trains front-line leaders on patient safety event follow-up methodology and human factors principles Develops and disseminates communication highlighting patient-safety learnings to promote organizational awareness Supports implementation of safety communication tools including huddles & safety briefs Committee Support Serves as primary staff support for a Patient Safety Committee and the Executive Safety Committee Reports RCA statuses and action items to Medical Review Committee (MRC); coordinates with MRC to support completion and hold process owners accountable Serves as liaison between clinical departments and quality functions on safety matters Actively embraces and supports organizational quality initiatives This role description is a general description of the essential job functions . It is not intended to describe all the duties that may be performed in this role. KEY COMPETENCIES: Systems Thinking Understanding how processes, people, and technology interact to create safety vulnerabilities or strengths. Ability to identify root causes rather than surface symptoms, recognize unintended consequences of changes, and design system-level solutions that make it easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing. Analytical Capability Proficiency in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting safety data to identify trends and patterns. Ability to translate complex data into clear, actionable insights for diverse audiences. Uses statistical process control concepts to distinguish signal from noise. Collaboration & Influence Building trust and credibility with clinical staff, leaders, and physicians. Ability to influence without direct authority, facilitate difficult conversations, and bring diverse stakeholders together around shared safety goals. Creates psychological safety that encourages honest reporting and open discussion of errors. Healthcare Knowledge Understanding of clinical workflows, healthcare regulations, and patient safety science. Stays current on evidence-based practices, emerging safety risks, and regulatory requirements. Applies knowledge of human factors engineering, resilience engineering, and high reliability principles to practical safety improvement. Integrity & Accountability Demonstrates high ethical standards in handling sensitive safety information. Maintains confidentiality while promoting transparen

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