Richard Griffey, MD, MPH

I grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, where we landed after being stationed in Baltimore and Anchorage when my father was in the Public Health Service (with a Navy appointment).  In college, at Vanderbilt I studied English and Neuroscience. After graduating, I worked briefly in pharmaceutical advertising on Madison Avenue in Manhattan as a junior copywriter. My time there was amazing but the work was not gratifying on a personal level. I decided I wanted to go to medical school, moved back to Virginia, took some classes and went to medical school at EVMS. I have a lot of physicians and nurses in my family, mostly in Ophthalmology, but I found EM to be a nice marriage of medicine and surgery. At first, I had visions of working locums in some remote locations, but I found I was interested in academics and a four year residency and completed residency at Harvard (MGH/Brigham and Women’s) in 2001, where I was fortunate to meet with many leaders in medicine. As EM was fairly new there, we had many struggles in carving out our place for EM, which bonded us together. I finished residency very interested in improving efficiency and in patient safety and quality. After graduating, I joined the faculty at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and with some guidance and support from my chair, I entered the Clinical Effectiveness Program at Harvard School of Public Health and I completed my MPH there over the next two years. It was inspiring to complete a MPH with a group of all physicians (mostly fellows), working on their own research projects and to learn from leaders in the field. Part of my time was paid for as a research fellow in the Center for Evidence-Based Imaging in the Department of Radiology. I did a lot of work in operations, especially with our EMR, and became director for quality and safety and of information systems and served on several hospital committees. I became involved in ACEPs quality infrastructure and over the next decade took on a number of leadership roles with increasing responsibilities, chairing workgroups, sections and committees, often around the intersection of quality, reimbursement and electronic data, ultimately chairing the Quality Improvement Patient Safety Section and then the Quality and Performance Committee. I interacted with the ACEP Board, andhave represented EM in many related national venues, at the National Quality Forum, at CMS, in partnerships with other specialty societies like the ACR, etc., and I have met great colleagues across the country from this work, often with opportunities for academic work on related manuscripts and materials.

My wife Julie is from St. Louis. When our family outgrew our condo in Boston, we decided to relocate to St. Louis. My uncle was Chair of Cell Biology at WUSM at the time and his wife was a Vice Chancellor so I had these other connections here. I joined the faculty at WUSM in 2007 as associate division chief and director of quality and safety. My wife teaches digital media/ web development at Webster University and runs her family’s manufacturing business e-commerce and marketing. We have three kids. The oldest is now in college and the youngest is starting high school.

Despite doing a fair amount of research I had it in my head that I never wanted to live from grant to grant, so I never bothered applying for funding and did not have a traditional K to R funding route. But having funding is nicer than not having any. At some point, I decided to apply for and completed an institutional K through the WU ICTS. Around this time, I also completed a funded Comprehensive Patient Safety and Leadership Fellowship sponsored by the Emergency Medicine Patient Safety Foundation, EMF and the NPSF and AHA and I had completed the IHI patient safety fellowship a few years before. In the midst of this I took a grantsmanship course at the ICTS, which was very informative. After that I applied for funding and had some success obtaining a R18 and then R01 funding for projects focused on better ways to do quality and safety surveillance for measurement of harm and quality improvement.  I also developed and taught a course for about 10 years in the WU Institute for Public Health on patient safety, quality measurement and quality improvement, letting this go during Covid. I have been active with the Dissemination and Implementation group at WU, helping author some of the seminal work that came out of our center. I recently rotated off an AHRQ Study Section, reviewing grants, which was a lot of work but was highly educational and worth it.

I have been partnered with two formal mentors in my career. The first was someone I only met with a few times; he gave good advice but was not an active or longstanding mentor. We still have a good relationship. He is an internationally known researcher and I am currently working on a project with him. The other is someone I was introduced to during my K award. He was great and helpful but one piece of advice led down a path to what turned out to be an unfruitful distraction. We both regretted this, and though we get along fine, the mentorship relationship did not last. I am a believer in formal training, in having different (but related) irons in the fire, and trying to create synergy across operational and scholarly efforts.  I have served on mentorship panels for a number of fellows outside our department, (often students from my course) and I have served as an informal mentor for many residents and junior faculty within our department over the years. I am currently a formal mentor for Dr. Enyo Ablordeppey and for Dr. Baumgartner.  Over my career I have had several false starts in research and on projects and I have learned some painful lessons and also what I think are some great lessons that I hope help others. I think regular meetings and check-ins are good and technology has really made this a lot easier. A good mentor can see down the road a bit further and sometimes around corners and can help guide projects and make a career path more fruitful and sustainable.