James M. Hoffman to Speak at Bachelor’s Degree Conferment Ceremony

Editor's note: This article was written prior to University of the Sciences' merger with and into Saint Joseph's University and does not reflect the current, combined institution. References to programs, offices, colleges, employees, etc., may be historical information.

James M. Hoffman, P'00, PharmD'01, will address the graduates at the 9th Annual Bachelor’s Degree Conferment Ceremony on Friday, May 21, 2021. Dr. Hoffman is Chief Patient Safety Officer and a member of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Department at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.

The ceremony honors students enrolled in the University’s Doctor of Pharmacy, Doctor of Physical Therapy, and Doctor of Occupational Therapy programs who have earned enough credits to obtain a Bachelor of Science Degree. They will return to campus to continue in their doctoral degree programs. Dr. Hoffmann will give the keynote address.

Dr. Hoffman provides oversight and leadership for patient safety across St. Jude. He focuses on refining existing tools and identifying new means of patient safety event detection, assessing and improving patient safety culture, and developing and improving clinical decision support.

Dr. Hoffman was a core member of the team that created the St. Jude Safe and Sound strategic plan, and he is particularly focused on helping St. Jude become an academic leader in quality, patient safety, and improvement science for children with catastrophic diseases. Two recent publications in Pediatrics illustrate Dr. Hoffman’s academic leadership for improvement science. One focused on improving medication alerts at St. Jude, and the other identified research priorities for pediatric patient safety.

Through work at St. Jude and nationally through the Clinical Pharmacogenetic Implementation Consortium, he is devoted to implementing pharmacogenetics as a patient safety strategy. Through these efforts, Dr. Hoffman works to accelerate the implementation of research discoveries in pharmacogenomics into the clinic through the development and dissemination of model practices and clinical practice guidelines. He has experience developing and refining clinical decision support for pharmacogenomics in electronic health records, which informs his leadership of the CPIC Informatics group with colleagues from Mayo Clinic and Stanford University.