This announcement was sent on behalf of Dr. Michael Avidan.
I am pleased to announce the appointment of Bethany Pennington, PharmD, BCPS, as the department’s inaugural Associate Vice Chair (AVC) for Quality and Safety.
In this role, Dr. Pennington will provide strategic leadership for the department’s quality and safety initiatives, leading the Center for Informatics, Quality Improvement, Research, and Safety (INQUIRES), and working in close collaboration with departmental leaders and hospital partners. She will help drive innovation and operational efficiency across quality improvement (QI) and patient safety efforts, supporting the department’s mission of delivering the highest standard of perioperative care. Her responsibilities will include oversight of safety event reporting, data-driven QI projects, MPOG quality initiatives, and cross-disciplinary collaborations, including educational programs for department trainees.
Dr. Pennington brings to this role over a decade of clinical, academic, and research experience in perioperative and critical care. She earned her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the St. Louis College of Pharmacy in 2010 and completed a critical care pharmacy residency at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in 2012. Clinically, she has focused on the perioperative care of critically ill surgical patients. From 2012 to 2021, she served as the clinical pharmacy specialist in the cardiothoracic surgery ICU and subsequently partnered with the telemedicine ICU. Her research centers on interventions aimed at improving outcomes and enhancing recovery in surgical patients. She is a Study Director for the multicenter randomized controlled trial, THRIVE (Trajectories of Recovery after Intravenous Propofol vs. Inhaled Volatile Anesthesia) and a pharmacist consultant and co-investigator for the Center for Perioperative Mental Health. As an educator, she serves as the Pharmacology Thread Lead for the Gateway Medical Student Curriculum at WashU Medicine. She is actively engaged in trainee education within the department and fosters collaborative educational partnerships with Goldfarb School of Nursing and the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy.
Dr. Pennington is a respected leader, educator, and collaborator whose dedication to patient safety and quality aligns seamlessly with the goals of this new leadership role. Please join us in congratulating her on this well-deserved appointment.