Senior Nurse Practitioner
[email protected]

Lauren is a senior nurse practitioner (NP) in the Johns Hopkins Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). Since 2017, she has provided care to critically ill children with a focus on neurocritical care, trauma, and burn patient populations. In her role, she works as part of a multidisciplinary team to provide holistic care to these medically complex patients. She is also credentialed for ultrasound guided PICC line placement with expertise in vascular access.

Lauren is the NP Coordinator for the PICU Safety, Quality, and Logistics Program, the Quality Action Chair for the PICU Steering Council, and an active member of the Comprehensive Unit-Based Safety Program (CUSP). Lauren is passionate about quality improvement and fundamentally believes that improved workflows and operations align with enhanced clinician and patient experiences. She is focused on developing infrastructure and implementing safety and quality initiatives within the PICU. This includes development of a unit-based multidisciplinary adverse event review program, creation of a Serious Safety Event (SSE) review process, and expansion and standardization of M & M conferences. By developing these unit-based programs, she aims to improve system-level processes and enhance faculty and staff education.

Lauren is also interested in the development of best practice clinical decision support tools. She completed the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality Leadership Academy, which included Lean for Healthcare Practitioners training. As part of a multidisciplinary team, Lauren helped develop a diagnostic stewardship support tool for PICU and PCICU patients with new onset fever. She also spearheaded enterprise-level efforts to standardize care for pediatric patients with diabetic ketoacidosis.

She continues to precept new hires and nurse practitioner students. As part of her quality improvement work, she has formally mentored Johns Hopkins School of Nursing Fuld Scholars as well as a PICU fellow for Armstrong Institute training. In 2020, she was selected as a member of the Advanced Practice Advisory Council (APAC) and also co-chairs the Quality Improvement and Patient Safety/Research and Evidenced-Based Practice APAC subcommittee at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Education

Lauren received her Master of Science and Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Duke University. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Stonehill College.

Publication

Booth LD, Sick-Samuels AC, Milstone AM, Fackler JC, Gnazzo LK, Stockwell DC. Culture Ordering for Patients with New-onset Fever: A Survey of Pediatric Intensive Care Unit Clinician Practices. Pediatr Qual Saf. 2021 Aug 26;6(5):e463. PMID: 34476315.