Dr. Patricia Groves is an Assistant Professor in the College of Nursing with a program of research focused on patient safety in hospitals. She is particularly interested in the intersections among safety culture, bedside nursing practice, patient safety engagement, and patient safety outcomes, as well as factors such as implicit bias that impact those relationships.

Dr. Groves’s interest in hospital patient safety was sparked early in her clinical career, when she had the opportunity to observe the results of wide variations in care delivery among and within hospitals as a staff nurse and supervisor of nursing services. She received her PhD in nursing from the University of Missouri-Columbia, with a focus in health care systems and a cognate of organizational communication, and then completed the VA Quality Scholars program as a postdoctoral fellow. Her dissertation used grounded theory methods to examine how bedside nurses keep patients safe within the safety culture of their organization. She has built on the theory and findings manuscripts from the dissertation in subsequent studies, including studies examining linkages among nursing, hospital safety culture, and patient safety outcomes; studies identifying tools and strategies that promote safe bedside nursing shift transition; and studies identifying processes and factors influencing nurse response to patient-expressed safety concerns. Dr. Groves is also a member of the Health Professional Educators Summer Symposium and a Director on the Genesis Health Systems Board.