Shawna J. Perry MD, FACEP is an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Florida Health Science Center in Jacksonville, Florida and is lead consultant to the Center for Health Care Human Factors at the Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality at Johns Hopkins Medicine. Perry has held several leadership positions during her 12 years at UF Jacksonville, including director of clinical operations, chief of service, and associate chair of emergency medicine. She has provided leadership and management to a myriad of departmental, hospital, and university-based initiatives. For six years, Perry was the director for patient safety system engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University Health Systems in Richmond, Virigina and associate professor/associate chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine. Perry has been a practicing emergency medicine physician for over 25 years in academic medical centers, community hospitals, and rural or critical-access settings.

Perry’s primary research interest is in patient safety, with a focus on human factors and ergonomics, the nature of system failures, transitions in care, the impact of IT upon clinical care, cognitive engineering in health care, organizational behavior, diagnostic safety, infection prevention, and teamwork. She is widely published in multiple domains beyond medicine, including human factors, naturalistic decision-making, communications, and resilient health care. Perry is also co-editor of the recently published book Comprehensive Healthcare Simulation: Improving Healthcare Systems, which explores the use of simulations for understanding and enhancing health care as an interdependent work system. She has been principal investigator, co-investigator, or consultant on a number of research projects funded by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, the National Patient Safety Foundation, the United States Army Research Laboratory, the Commonwealth Fund, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, the Emergency Medicine Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Perry is a graduate of Stanford University in Stanford, California and of Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. She completed her four-year residency in emergency medicine at the University of Florida Health Science Center in Jacksonville, Florida.