Pascale Carayon

Dr. Carayon is Procter & Gamble Bascom Professor in Total Quality in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Director of the Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She leads the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Carayon received her engineering diploma from the Ecole Centrale de Paris, France, in 1984 and her PhD degree in industrial engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988.

Dr. Carayon’s research belongs to the discipline of human factors engineering, in particular macroergonomics. Her scholarly contributions focused on modeling, assessing, and, improving work systems (i.e., the system of tasks performed by individuals using various technologies in a physical and organizational environment) in order to improve system performance and worker well-being. She has developed human factors and systems engineering methods and the SEIPS model to improve patient safety and health information technologies in complex health care settings. Dr. Carayon’s research has been funded by the AHRQ, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, various foundations, and private industry. She is a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and a Fellow of the International Ergonomics Association.

In 2015 and 2016, Becker’s Hospital Review named her one of 50 experts leading the field of patient safety. In 2015, she received the A.R. Lauer Safety Award from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society for contributions to the human factors of patient safety. In 2016, she received the John M. Eisenberg patient safety and quality award for individual achievement from the National Quality Forum and the Joint Commission. Dr. Carayon has written more than 130 journal publications. She is the editor of the Handbook of Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care and Patient Safety. She was a member of the IOM Committee on Diagnostic Error in Healthcare.