Emily Patterson

Emily Patterson, PhD, is a professor in the Riccio Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and the Elaine Marieb College of Nursing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and is part of the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation.

Dr. Patterson is a fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. She specializes in human factors, patient safety, and health informatics. She has served as a principal investigator or co-investigator on numerous grants and contracts, including for the VA, the Air Force, the Navy, and the National Patient Safety Foundation. She is an expert in qualitative methods, particularly cognitive task analysis, ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and co-design sessions with stakeholders. She served as a scientific adviser on using human factors engineering to improve patient safety for The Joint Commission, the National Board of Medical Examiners, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, ECRI, and the Society of Hospital Medicine. She gave invited presentations to the Institute of Medicine and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

Overall, Dr. Patterson has an h-index of 49 on Google Scholar with more than 10,000 citations.