Heidi Herrick, MD, MSCE

Dr. Herrick is neonatologist and a clinical investigator in the field of human factors and its application to neonatal acute care including resuscitation and tracheal intubation. She has completed formal training in clinical epidemiology through the Master of Science in Clinical Epidemiology program at the University of Pennsylvania, and she is currently pursuing a Master of Science in human factors from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. She is an Assistant Professor in Pediatrics at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. She is an attending neonatologist at CHOP and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) where she serves as the Director of Neonatal Audiovisual Recording for both institutions.

The overall goals of her research are to integrate human factors tools, methodology, and approaches into neonatal acute care to improve patient safety and outcomes and optimize human performance. One of the key tenants of human factors is to study work as done, not work as imagined. To this end, Dr. Herrick’s research employs video recording and analysis, including eye-tracking technology, during delivery room resuscitation, in-unit resuscitation, and during tracheal intubation. Her work focuses on evaluating the impact of system factors on team performance and patient outcomes. She has employed multiple types of research designs in her work including prospective and retrospective observational studies, retrospective cohort studies, qualitative studies including qualitative interviews and video reflexive ethnography, quality improvement studies, and multicenter randomize controlled trials.