Dr. Scanlon is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics-Critical Care with the Medical College of Wisconsin and the Associate Medical Director of IS at Children’s Hospital. Dr. Scanlon provides clinical care in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. Previously, Dr. Scanlon spent five years as the Patient Safety Officer for the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin.
Dr. Scanlon has formal training in epidemiology, quality improvement, human factors engineering and patient safety, including completion of the Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship sponsored by the National Patient Safety Foundation and the American Hospital Association. He has led a national committee on the development of pediatric critical care quality measures and currently serves on the Joint Commission Sentinel Event Advisory Group. Additionally, he is involved in international work on improving healthcare for children through the Pediatric International Patient Safety and Quality Collaborative (PIPSQC).
Dr. Scanlon is active in a research capacity. He is a co-investigator on grants from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and the National Library of Medicine to examine the impact of safety technologies on both medication errors and employee work. His primary area of patient safety interest is the impact of medical devices and technology on reducing errors, causing new errors, and changing how work is done in health care environments.
He has authored numerous papers and book chapters, and has been an invited speaker on the topics of patient safety and human factors at regional, national and
international meetings.