Melinda D. Sawyer, MSN, RN, CNS-BC

Assistant Director of Patient Safety
Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality

Melinda Sawyer, RN, MSN is a Senior Research Coordinator in the Quality and Safety Research Group (QSRG) and also serves as the Patient Safety Officer for the Department of Medicine of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. She is a nurse by training and spent 9 years as a bedside nurse in progressive care and then in bed management and as a member of the hospital’s resuscitation team. Her clinical experiences led her to the field of patient safety and as a result, she recently completed a Masters of Nursing as a Clinical Nurse Specialist with a focus on Patient Safety. She began the first CUSP project in a non-intensive care unit at Johns Hopkins and has since participated in numerous quality improvement projects. She is most interested in multi-disciplinary collaboration as a tool to improve patient outcomes. To this end, she is currently starting an observational study to evaluate the effect of multidisciplinary resuscitation training on patient outcomes. Melinda will contribute her clinical and organizational expertise in the On the CUSP: STOP BSI project as a QSRG research coordinator.