Laura Steighner
Laura Steighner has over 17 years of experience contributing to applied research in the fields of industrial/organizational psychology and healthcare research and quality. Dr. Steighner’s areas of expertise include test development; program evaluation; training development, measurement, and evaluation; performance measurement; facilitation of multi-disciplinary expert panels and focus groups; development of job aid decision tools; and survey development. Much of her current work focuses on employing applied research principles and methodology in the field of healthcare. Currently, she serves as the project director for the development of test items and forms for a nationally administered, high-stakes standardized exam. Dr. Steighner recently completed two projects for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) (1) to conduct an environmental scan of patient safety training and education programs to conduct a socio-technical probabilistic risk assessment on the occurrence of surgical site infections in ambulatory surgery centers and (2) to conduct an environmental scan of patient safety education and training programs and develop a searchable catalog of programs.
Additional work in the area of healthcare and patient safety includes conducting an impact evaluation of the Patient Safety Improvement Corps (PSIC) training for AHRQ; conducting a national evaluation for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to improve the retention of workers providing home and community-based care services using surveys, structured interviews, and focus groups for data collection; developing structured guidance to determine the severity of deficient nursing home practices; developing TeamSTEPPS™, a medical team skills training program for which AIR received the M. Scott Myers Award from the Society for Industrial/Organizational Psychology; evaluating and refining a performance measurement system to assess State Survey Agency performance; and performing a qualitative study on the effectiveness of State informal dispute resolution processes following citations of deficient nursing home care practices.
Dr. Steighner has a research background in performance measurement and professional experience in facilitating expert panels and focus groups, conducting both quantitative and qualitative research, designing and conducting training program evaluations, and developing and managing qualifying exams.