Dr Christine Greenidge has been appointed to the position of Chief Operations Officer (COO) at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
A media statement today said QEH welcomed its new COO on February 14.
Greenidge, who has extensive experience in nursing and teaching, has a special interest in patient safety and satisfaction.
The media release said that at age 19, Greenidge deviated from her original plan, choosing instead to begin her career in healthcare in nursing.
“Originally, when I was in high school, I wanted to be a physician and, up until my graduation, I was tossing back and forth between being a physician and a nurse,” she said.
However, she explained her mother’s influence: “My mother is a retired nurse . . . and my mum often came home and shared her nursing stories and many of them were delightful despite the hard work nursing is known for . . . and innately I have a very caring spirit . . . so after high school I decided that’s exactly what I wanted to do.”
This led her to attain a Bachelor’s, and a Master’s degree in nursing, as well as a Doctorate in Healthcare Administration.
Greenidge explained that nursing “is a key discipline that influences the experience of our patients and their families, and they [nurses] are the pillars that hold up a lot of healthcare organisations”.
She has used the knowledge obtained through her decades in the profession to lecture upcoming nurses at New York institutions such as Lehman College and Bronx Community College, while she was a Professor of Nursing, and Business Administration.
In addition to nursing and teaching, Greenidge, previously the Associate Executive Director of the New York City Health and Hospital Corporation, the largest municipal healthcare system in the United States, had oversight of multiple inter-disciplinary departments, primarily focused on patient care services, training and development, customer service and patient safety.
She was also a Patient Safety Officer, accredited by the Institute of Healthcare Improvement (IHI).
“I’m a patient-centred type of person who recognises the value of every discipline . . . to achieve outstanding clinical outcomes for patients and, above all, their satisfaction . . . that recognition [patient safety] . . . reminds me of exactly what we’re here for – to cause no harm, and to mitigate risks in causing harm.”
In her new role of COO, Greenidge intends to focus on customer service and quality care outcomes.
“Within customer service would be patient safety, patient satisfaction, as well as staff satisfaction . . . . I think they go hand in hand; but also streamlining operations, looking for where we see processes or systems broken and fix them as quickly as we can.”
During this first week at the QEH, Greenidge met many of the staff through her rounds and described them as passionate people. (PR)
