David P Stevens

Biography

David P. Stevens is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Boston, Adjunct Professor, Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Lebanon, NH, and Editor Emeritus, BMJ Quality and Safety, London.

His book, Writing to improve healthcare: An author’s guide to publication, is anchored in the rationale that if there are better, cheaper, safer methods to provide healthcare for patients, it is imperative that those methods be reported—and promptly—to make them available for the benefit of a broad range of patients and health systems.

Many of the concepts for this book germinated while he was Editor-in-Chief of London-based Quality and Safety in Health Care (now BMJ Quality and Safety) and were road tested in widely attended writing workshops that included seminars sponsored by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, the BMJ, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

Notable among these workshops were 5 years of monthly writing seminars conducted with resident trainees and faculty in the Healthcare Improvement Writing Program in the Leadership and Preventive Medicine Residency (LPMR) at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. The LPMR trains physicians in population health and organizational leadership for health systems improvement. These trainees and their faculty were relentless with their questions, constructive criticism, and advice that resulted in the refinement of ideas about scholarly writing for healthcare improvement that are found in Writing to improve healthcare.

He is a founding member of the original design team for the SQUIRE Publication Guidelines (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence) as well as the author of over 100 peer-reviewed scholarly publications.

Earlier in his career, he was the Scott R. Inkley Professor of General Internal Medicine and Vice Dean for Academic Affairs at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine, Cleveland, OH. Subsequently, while a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellow at the National Academies of Science in Washington, DC, he served as health policy advisor to the Chair, US Senate Labor Committee. This was followed by appointment as Chief Academic Affiliations Officer for the US Veterans Health Administration and Vice President for Healthcare Improvement for the Association of American Medical Colleges.

He lives in Chilmark, MA, a town of some 800 souls that overlooks the Atlantic on the northeast coast of the US.

Education

MD, Western Reserve School of Medicine, Cleveland, OH

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Healthcare delivery science, Healthcare improvement science, Internal medicine, Patient safety, editing and scholarly writing

Personal Interests

Cooking, hiking, reading

Books