Karen O'Connell, M.D., M.Ed.
- Professor of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine
- Director of Patient Safety
Karen O'Connell, M.D., is a board certified pediatric emergency medicine physician and the director of patient safety of the Emergency Medicine and Trauma Center at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. Her clinical research over the past decade has focused on resuscitation quality improvement, family-centered care, patient safety and EMS for children.
Dr. O'Connell has national collaborative research experience as an investigator and serves as the Site PI with the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN). She has also served nationally on the advisory board for the National EMSC Data Analysis Resource Center (NEDARC) for five years and currently serves as an Executive Committee member for the American Academy of Pediatrics, Section on Emergency Medicine. Regionally, she serves as the associate pediatric medical director with the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems (MIEMSS) since 2007.
Dr. O'Connell completed a Masters in Education in 2011 with a focus on human and organizational learning from the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and has created numerous resuscitation education curricula for providers of all levels of training; from prehospital to subspecialty level training. Currently, Dr. O'Connell leads a multi-site research collaborative focusing on pediatric resuscitative care using video review technology, The Videography in Pediatric Emergency Resuscitation [VIPER] collaborative.