Bob Wachter is Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Associate Chairman of UCSF's Department of Medicine, Chief of the Medical Service at UCSF Medical Center, and Chief of UCSF's 50-faculty Division of Hospital Medicine.

Bob is an expert in patient safety, health care quality, and the organization of hospital care; he has published over 200 articles and six books in these areas. He coined the term "hospitalist" in a 1996 New England Journal of Medicine article and is generally acknowledged as the academic leader of the field, the fastest growing specialty in modern medical history. He is a past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine.

He is also a national leader in the fields of patient safety and health care quality. He has written two books on patient safety, including the new 2nd edition of Understanding Patient Safety. He is a recipient of the John M. Eisenberg award for his work in safety, and is a frequent discussant on the topic in the media. His blog, Wachter's World (www.wachtersworld.org), is one of the nation's most popular health care blogs. Modern Physician magazine has ranked him as one of the 30 most influential physicians in the United States several times; his #10 ranking in 2010 made him the most highly ranked academic physician in the country. In 2012-13, he will serve as chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine.

Niraj Sehgal is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where his work focuses on improving the quality and safety of care through educational programs, systems innovation, and change management. In addition to his clinical work as a hospitalist, he is the Associate Chair for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety in the Department of Medicine, a role that focuses on aligning the clinical and educational enterprises to improve patient care. He’s also an active participant in key quality/safety committees and initiatives for UCSF Medical Center.

Niraj is also a committed educator who speaks locally and nationally on topics of teamwork/communication, safety culture, quality improvement, and leadership development. He’s published several articles in this arena and co-authored a chapter on quality measurement in the leading textbook on Hospital Medicine. He works closely with colleagues at the UCSF Center for Health Professions where he’s helped create a number of leadership development programs for physicians and other healthcare providers.

Niraj is a graduate of Washington University and Rush Medical College, and earned a Masters in Public Health from UC Berkeley. His training included a Residency and Chief Residency in Internal Medicine at Stanford University, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. Niraj was also a selected fellow and graduate of the California Healthcare Foundation Leadership Program.

Brad Sharpe is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. He is also the Associate Division Chief in the Division of Hospital Medicine and one of the Associate Program Directors for the UCSF Internal Medicine Residency. In these positions, Brad is active in hospital quality improvement, including JCAHO Core Measures Performance, discharge coordination, and patient flow. He serves on the Physician Advisory Group, the primary physician group acting to implement computerized physician order entry at Moffitt-Long Hospital. In his educational roles, he oversees all inpatient rotations at UCSF and regularly lectures to housestaff and students on topics including quality improvement, community-acquired pneumonia, and discharge planning.

Brad graduated from Harvard Medical School and was a categorical resident and chief resident at UCSF.

John Q. Young is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF and staff psychiatrist at Kaiser Permanente’s Oakland Medical Center. He has served as the Director of the Medication Management Clinics at Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics and as the Associate Director for the Residency Training Program in the UCSF Department of Psychiatry. He is a member of the National Board of Medical Examiner’s Patient Safety Task Force. In addition, he sits on local patient safety committees and leads efforts to incorporate quality improvement processes into ambulatory settings. His principal research interests are inpatient safety, quality improvement, performance assessment, EBM and clinical decision making, and medical education.

Joe Guglielmo is Professor and Chair of the Department of Clinical Pharmacy, School of Pharmacy at the University of California, San Francisco and Associate Director of Pharmaceutical Services at the UCSF Medical Center. He earned his doctorate in Pharmacy from the University of Southern California and completed a 1-year postdoctoral general practice residency at the University of California, San Francisco.

Joe has served in a number of roles at UCSF, including as a clinical pharmacist in the intensive care unit and infectious diseases pharmacist. Joe developed the UCSF Medical Center Antimicrobial Management Program in the 1980s and has mentored infectious diseases specialty residents and fellows continuously since 1986. He created the role of the HIV specialty pharmacist at the UCSF Medical Center Ambulatory Care Center. Leadership roles include Interim Director of Pharmaceutical Services, Associate Director of Inpatient Clinical Services in the Department of Pharmaceutical Services, and Vice Chair of Scholarship for the Department of Clinical Pharmacy.

His primary research interests involve the safe, effective, and appropriate use of antimicrobials, as well as the pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacokinetics of anti-infective agents. He serves as long-term editor of Applied Therapeutics: The Clinical Use of Drugs and the Handbook for Applied Therapeutics.

Kaveh Shojania is Editor-in-Chief of BMJ Quality and Safety and Director of the Centre for Patient Safety at the University of Toronto, where he also sees patients as a hospital-based general internist. Kaveh's research focuses on identifying evidence-based patient safety interventions and effective strategies for translating evidence into practice. His work has appeared in leading journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and the Annals of Internal Medicine. He has lectured widely on issues related to the scholarly advancement of patient safety and quality improvement, including twice delivering invited lectures to the US Institute of Medicine.

Before moving back to Canada in 2004, Kaveh was on the faculty at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where he was one of the founding editors of AHRQ WebM&M. He was also lead editor (and authored six chapters) of Making Healthcare Safer, the evidence report produced for AHRQ following the publication of the Institute of Medicine report, To Err Is Human. While at UCSF, Kaveh co-authored a book (with Dr. Wachter) on patient safety for a general audience that received excellent reviews in the New York Times and many other media and has sold approximately 50,000 copies. In 2004, Kaveh and Bob Wachter received one of the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety Awards from the US Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the National Quality Forum for work in patient safety that has had an impact at a national level.

Kaveh received his medical degree from the University of Manitoba and completed his residency training at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital. After a hospital medicine fellowship at UCSF, he joined the faculty there for several years before returning to Canada.

Dr. Franck is Professor and Chair of the Department of Family Health Care Nursing at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing.

Linda has over 25 years experience in leading interdisciplinary teams to conduct clinical research to improve the quality and safety of hospital care for children, and has over 160 peer-reviewed publications on related topics. She has particular expertise in research regarding the patient and family experience of health care and has pioneered interventions to engage parents and children as partners in pain management and in research to improve quality of care and quality of life.

Linda received her bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of San Francisco and her master’s degree and PhD in nursing from UCSF. She rejoined the UCSF faculty 2010 after a decade at the University College London, Institute of Child Health where she was the first Chair of Children’s Nursing Research in the UK.