Administrative Director of Quality and Safety
Swedish Medical Center
Seattle, WA
Joan Ching, M.N., R.N., C.P.H.Q., is the Administrative Director of Quality & Patient Safety at Swedish Medical Center, a five hospital system located in Seattle, Washington. Joan is a Jonas Policy Scholar with the American Academy of Nursing's Quality Expert Panel and conducts quality improvement research. She is also an affiliate faculty member at University of Washington in the School of Nursing. Prior to joining Swedish, Joan served as an Administrative Director at Virginia Mason Medical Center and Patient Safety Officer at University of Washington Medical Center. Her passion for patient safety comes from over twenty-five years of nursing experience in medical-surgical, critical care and post-anesthesia care nursing. For a dozen years, Joan worked in an advanced practice nursing role as the UWMC Pain Management Clinical Nurse Specialist. Joan has long supplemented her work in patient safety and quality improvement with her special interest in complex adaptive systems. She also has received extensive training in applying the Toyota Production System (Lean Management) to health care through certification and fellowship programs that included two study missions to Japan. Joan has served on a national panel to provide scientific and clinical expertise in the development of medication and adverse event measures for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' reporting programs. Joan is also an active member of the Northwest Organization for Nurse Executives and the Collaborative Alliance for Nursing Outcomes (CALNOC), the nation's first database and registry for nurse-sensitive outcome measures. She also serves as a community advisor to Nikkei Horizons, a long-term care residence for Asian Americans in Seattle. Joan earned her undergraduate degree in nursing from Seattle Pacific University and her master's degree in physiologic nursing from University of Washington. She is currently enrolled in a DNP program at Seattle University.