Joan Smith

JOAN SMITH, PHD, RN, NNP-BC, FAAN Dr. Smith has more than 3 decades of neonatal nursing experience primarily as a neonatal nurse practitioner (NNP) and 15 as a quality and safety leader. She is currently the director of the Clinical Quality, Safety, and Practice Excellence department at St. Louis Children’s Hospital (SLCH). As a quality improvement advisor, she’s led multiple interdisciplinary improvement teams across the organization and system to reduce harm and improve patient outcomes. She is one of the founders of the Children’s Hospital Neonatal Consortium (CHNC) quality improvement (QI) collaborative and a member of their QI steering committee and the CHNC executive leadership team. Dr. Smith has developed and implemented an organizational interprofessional QI Bootcamp and Psychological Safety curriculum to equip and empower high performing teams. She has numerous peer-reviewed publications, has authored several book chapters, and serves as a member of multiple editorial boards. She is a former NICU mother of 29-week preterm twin boys who are soon to be 30 years old. She loves spending time with her family and is energized by the teams she has the privilege of working alongside with and learning from every day.