Robert M. Wachter, MD is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where he directs the 60-physician Division of Hospital Medicine. Author of 250 articles and 6 books, he coined the term “hospitalist” in 1996 and is generally considered the “father” of the hospitalist field, the fastest growing specialty in the history of modern medicine. He is past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, and is currently the chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine.

In the safety and quality arenas, he edits the US government’s two leading websites on safety (they receive about one million yearly visits) and has written two bestselling books on the subject, including Understanding Patient Safety, whose 2nd edition was published in 2012. In 2004, he received the John M. Eisenberg Award, the nation’s top honor in patient safety. For the past five years, Modern Healthcare magazine has named him one of the 50 most influential physician-executives in the U.S. (#14 in 2012). He has served on the healthcare advisory boards of several companies, including Google. His blog, www.wachtersworld.org, is one of the nation’s most popular healthcare blogs.

Niraj Sehgal is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair for Quality & Safety in the Department of Medicine. His work focuses on improving healthcare systems through the development of education and training programs, engagement of trainees and providers in systems innovation, and a commitment to change management strategies. He speaks locally and nationally on topics related to quality, safety, and leadership development.

At UCSF, Niraj divides his time between caring for hospitalized patients and supervising trainees, directing quality and safety programs within the Department of Medicine and UCSF Medical Center, and working at the UCSF Center for Health Professions. For the latter, he directs two physician leadership programs that train professionals to manage and lead change in their organizations and a third program that provides similar training to an interdisciplinary group of hospital-based providers. Niraj was recognized for his teaching and mentoring excellence through induction into UCSF’s Academy of Medical Educators in 2009.

Niraj is a graduate of Washington University and Rush Medical College, and earned a Master’s in Public Health from UC Berkeley. He completed a Residency and served as Chief Resident in Internal Medicine at Stanford University, and completed 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 received his bachelor degree in chemistry from Stanford University and his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. He completed his residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine at UCSF. He currently is a Professor of Clinical Medicine and hospitalist and maintains clinical, administrative, and educational roles.

Clinically, Brad serves as an attending on the inpatient service at Moffitt-Long Hospital 3-4 months a year, working closely with housestaff and students. Administratively, he acts as the Associate Division Chief for the Division of Hospital Medicine and the Associate Chief of the Medical Service at Moffitt-Long Hospital. In these roles, he helps manage the day-to-day operations of the Division and the inpatient services.

Educationally, Brad is the Associate Program Director for Inpatient Affairs for the UCSF Internal Medicine Residency. Brad lectures to the residents on topics including community-acquired pneumonia, effective signout, and updates in the medical literature. Brad is involved in medical student education – he lectures on patient interviewing, oral case presentations, and clinical topics such as hyponatremia and COPD exacerbations. Brad also graduated from the Stanford Faculty Development Clinical Teaching course and now teaches the class to UCSF faculty and Internal Medicine residents. He has given numerous presentations on improving clinical teaching both regionally and nationally. He has been the recipient of multiple teaching awards.

His research focuses on improving the field of hospital medicine and on medical education. He has published articles on faculty development, mentorship, housestaff supervision, oral case presentations, and community-acquired pneumonia.

In addition, Brad has multiple national roles in academic hospital medicine. He has served on multiple committees for the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM), including the Academic Committee. He is the former co-chair of the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM) Academic Hospitalist Taskforce. He is also a co-director of the Academic Hospitalist Academy, an annual 4-day “boot camp” for junior academic hospitalists.

Dr. Young is Associate Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF and a staff psychiatrist at Kaiser Permanente’s Oakland Medical Center. He is the Associate Director of the Kaiser-UCSF Longitudinal Integrated Clerkship and a research scholar in the Behavioral Health Research Initiative (part of the Kaiser Northern California Division of Research). From 2005-2012, he 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 in patient safety, quality improvement, performance assessment, EBM and clinical decision making, and medical education.

He received a BA from Harvard College in Social Studies and the Comparative Study of Religion and a Master’s in Public Policy from the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy. He received his medical degree from the UCSF School of Medicine and completed a residency in Adult General Psychiatry at UCSF.

Dr. 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 one year post-doctoral general practice residency at the University of California, San Francisco.

Dr. Guglielmo has served in a number of roles at UCSF, including as a clinical pharmacist in the intensive care unit and infectious diseases pharmacist. Dr. Guglielmo 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. Applied Therapeutics: The Clinical Use of Drugs.

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. He has published over 100 peer review articles, including in leading journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, 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. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement at the University of Toronto.

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.