2006 Idaho Conference on Health Care
Rosemary Gibson
Rosemary Gibson is the author of Wall of Silence, a book of narratives about patient and clinician experiences of medical error that puts a human face on the Institute of Medicine report, To Err is Human. The book has been reviewed in the Journal of the American Medical Association and Health Affairs, referenced in proceedings of the U.S. Senate, mentioned in Congressional testimony, noted in The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe, and highlighted in the May 2005 issue of O Magazine.
She has given more than one hundred keynote presentations for organizations such as the National Quality Forum, the Joint Commission, the American Organization of Nurse Executives, National Council of State Boards of Nursing, Federation of State Medical Boards, as well as hospitals and universities.
At the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation she led a national strategy to improve end-of-life care and establish palliative care in mainstream health care. She worked with Bill Moyers and Public Affairs Television on the PBS documentary, "On Our Own Terms," which showed to more than 20 million viewers how our health care system can better care for terminally ill patients and their families. These efforts have led to the development of the JCAHO pain standards and the launching of many of the palliative care programs that now exist in more than 1200 hospitals, an increase from just 25 in the mid-1990s.
She is a graduate of Georgetown University and has a masters degree from The London School of Economics.