The Role of the Medication Safety Officer

Rita K. Jew, PharmD, MBA, BCPPS, FASHP, (she/her) is president at the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP). Prior to ISMP, Jew spent over 25 years in the acute care setting as a neonatal/pediatric specialist and held various leadership positions. She received her PharmD from the University of California at San Francisco, completed a residency in clinical pharmacy at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and received her MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Jennifer Chang, PharmD, BCPS, (she/her) is an associate teaching professor at the University of Washington School of Pharmacy. Her professional interests include patient safety, institutional practice, and well-being. She completed her residency training at the University of Washington and is a Board-Certified Pharmacotherapy Specialist. Jennifer has held various positions in the health systems setting and provided leadership in designing and implementing core courses related to safety and pharmacist skills in the PharmD curriculum.

Jennifer Matias, PharmD, BCPS, CPPS, (she/her) is a medication safety director at Kaiser Permanente where she tracks medication safety issues and collaborates with leaders to develop and implement enterprise solutions that improve and promote safety within the organization’s medication use process. Her mission is to prevent patient harm from medication errors by ingraining safety culture, systems thinking, and high reliability principles and advocating for formalized medication safety roles and training in the broader healthcare industry.

Joel Daniel, PharmD, MS, CPPS, (he/him) serves as a system medication safety pharmacist for CoxHealth in southwest Missouri, which consists of six hospitals with associated regional clinics and surgical centers. Daniel’s primary work focuses on protecting patients and staff from complexity in healthcare by streamlining quality improvement within medication management. Examples of this work include system-wide anaphylaxis protocols, leading and maintaining a 50% reduction in opioid harms, and addressing alert fatigue.