Valerie Vaughn, MD, MSc
Golden Anniversary Prize for Distinguished Clinical Investigation
Valerie Vaughn, MD, MSc, knew she wanted to be a physician and scientist from an early age. She describes her background as a “modest” one: her father served in the Army, and her mother taught first grade.
“Neither of them really knew much about how to navigate the treacherous pathway of getting into medical school and becoming a scientist,” Vaughn said.
But they did instill in her a love of knowledge and numbers—and, most importantly, the confidence that she could change the world if she worked hard.
“I was really interested in learning and discovering new things but also in helping to relieve suffering,” Vaughn said. “Early in my medical career, I realized that we don’t always get it right in medicine—that doctors are humans, too. Like all humans, we make mistakes.”
In her role as a practicing hospitalist and director of hospital medicine research at the Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, Vaughn works to help doctors improve patient care and safety by reducing diagnostic error and inappropriate antibiotic prescribing.
Over the past six years, Vaughn and her team have tackled antibiotic overuse by demonstrating the efficacy of “upstream” diagnostic testing.
“If we can improve the way we use diagnostic tests, then we can improve the way we do medical care,” she said. “I think that’s a little bit of insight that can do more than just help us with antibiotics but help us understand how to improve patient care generally.”
Vaughn’s scope is not just centered on outcomes at University of Utah Hospital. She also serves as the hospitalist lead for the Antimicrobial Use Initiative within the Michigan Hospital Medicine Safety (HMS) Consortium and collaborates with hospitalists across the nation to ensure that patients get equitable, safe care wherever they need it.
“Some hospitals need different resources and strategies than others, and I’ve really worked to try to make sure that happens,” Vaughn said. “Over the past few years, we’ve been able to make a difference. We’ve reduced antibiotic overuse, we’ve reduced the side effects and harms from inappropriate prescribing, and we’ve helped make diagnosis and patient care safer.”
With funding from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Vaughn and her colleagues at the HMS Consortium recently developed two quality improvement measures that earned endorsements from the National Quality Forum, a nonprofit organization focused on driving measurable health improvements for patients nationwide. These measures are currently in use in 69 Michigan hospitals and 12 Mountain West critical access hospitals.
“We’ve reduced antibiotic overuse, we’ve reduces the side effects and harms from inappropriate prescribing, and we’ve helped make diagnosis and patient care safer.”
“What I’m most excited about is that, more recently, some of this work has been getting national attention,” Vaughn said. “We’ve been able to work with policymakers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to try to take what we’ve learned locally and improve care nationally.”
As the recipient of this year’s Golden Anniversary Prize for Distinguished Clinical Investigation, Vaughn hopes this recognition will bring awareness to other initiatives she and her colleagues are undertaking at the university. One is the launch of the Utah Quality Advancement Laboratory (UQuAL) Hospital Medicine team: an embedded nurse liaison will implement quality-improvement projects and gather frontline data to improve care locally and be disseminated more broadly.
“I’m really excited about this initiative. It’s something that we couldn’t do anywhere else and without the support of people here in the Department of Internal Medicine,” she said. “I’m hoping this award will help others learn about it and get involved if they’re interested.”