Karen Garvey MPA/HCA, DFASHRM, CPHRM, CPPS

Karen Garvey serves as the Vice President for Safety & Clinical Risk Management for Parkland Health in Dallas, Texas. Reporting to the Chief Quality & Safety Officer, her current responsibilities include health system oversight of Regulatory & Accreditation, Patient Safety and Clinical Risk Management, Quality & Safety Education and has been heavily involved in the Parkland journey to becoming a High Reliability Organization. Additionally, she is the Executive Sponsor for the SPARKs (Supporting Parkland Staff) Peer Support Program, is the Chairperson for Workforce Safety Initiatives involving proactive and reactive strategies to decrease violence against our employees and physicians. She serves on local, state, and national committees collaborating to collectively address this significant issue. She is often requested to speaks in forums about various levels of work to address the issue.
Karen is also active in the American Society for Healthcare Risk Managers (ASHRM) where she is currently serving a second term as a member of the ASHRM Board of Managers. In her love of mentoring healthcare professionals in these specialties, she has been active as national teaching faculty for the ASHRM and Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) for each organization's national certification courses. She has been active on the IHI Workforce Safety, Well Being and Equity Workgroup where she is an Advisory lead and is a participant in the AHA Hospital Against Violence Workgroup. Karen has attained two fellowships in Patient Safety through the HRET Patient Safety Leadership Fellowship and the Harvard Consortium Senior Patient Safety Executive Leadership Course.
Karen received the DFW Great 100 Award for Nurses in 2017, the Healthcare Risk Management Leadership Award from ASHRM in October 2019 and the Presidential Citation Award for ASHRM in October 2021 and the inaugural Nursing Daisy Award for Nursing Ethics in May 2023.