Patricia A. Hickey

Dr. Hickey, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, is known internationally for her work in leadership development, patient safety, and bridging nursing practice and health policy. She has disseminated cutting edge nursing knowledge in more than 100 publications and hundreds of presentations at national and international symposia.

As the nursing director of OPENPediatrics, she leads the Nursing World Shared Practice Forum, which highlights the science and practice of pediatric nurse scientists across the world. She is also a founding board member of a non-profit organization for pediatric healthcare in Guatemala. This foundation raises funds for children to receive health care who would otherwise live without health care because of economic and social circumstances. The greatest impact of her contributions to pediatric global health has been in pediatric leadership at the international level, in particular in China, through 25 years of senior volunteer work with Project HOPE. This work is sustained through transnational exchanges that Dr. Hickey has orchestrated for 210 medical students, junior faculty, physicians and nurses from Shanghai and Boston.

Dr. Hickey collaboratively leads the International Quality Improvement Collaborative for Reducing Pediatric Mortality in the Developing World, which includes leveraging internet technology to educate clinicians in 39 centers across resource-limited countries. To date, this collaborative has educated more than 1,000 physicians and nurses across the world. The outcomes of this project have recently been published demonstrating the significant reduction of mortality and sepsis in more than 25,000 patients across 21 pediatric cardiac surgery programs in developing countries. This is the first publication to show the significant association between web-based clinician learning and improved patient outcomes.

Internationally, Dr Hickey is a member of the Education Committee of the Global Humanitarian Forum for Congenital Heart Surgery in Geneva and the Executive Committee of the International Quality Improvement Collaborative for Reducing Mortality in the Developing World. Nationally, she is a member of the Quality Metric Steering Committee for the American College of Cardiology and the Transforming Care Delivery Expert Panel for the American Academy of Nursing. Her policy work has been influential at the state level with the development of an interdisciplinary model for legislative action in Massachusetts.

Dr. Hickey’s contributions have been recognized with several prestigious honors and awards including the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses Circle of Excellence Award; Fellowship in the American Academy of Nursing; and The United States President’s Gold Volunteer Service Award in 2013.