Departmental Affiliations
Albert Wu, MD, MPH, studies the impact of safety problems on patients and health care workers.
Contact Info
Research Interests
Patient Safety; Second Victim; Disclosure; Incident Reporting; Quality of Life; Comparative Effectiveness Research; Patient Centered Outcomes Research; Quality of Care; MOS-HIV Health Survey; Community Based Participatory Research; Peer Support
Additional Links
Experiences & Accomplishments
His research and teaching focus on the impact of health care safety problems on patients and health worker, and on patient reported outcomes.
He was among the first to measure quality of life outcomes in people with HIV. He co-founded the Outcomes Committee of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group of the NIH ACTG. He developed the MOS-HIV Health Survey, a leading measure of health related quality of life for people with HIV that is used widely in international trials and research studies.
He has studied the handling of medical errors since 1988, and has published influential papers including “Do house officers learn from their mistakes” (JAMA 1991), “Medical error: the second victim” (BMJ, 2000). He was a member of the Institute of Medicine committee on Preventing Medication Errors, and Senior Adviser to the World Health Organization Patient Safety program in Geneva from 2007-2009. He is Director of Strategic Collaborations for the Armstrong Institute
He was director of the AHRQ-funded Hopkins DEcIDE center for comparative effectiveness research from 2005-2013. He is Director of the Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research (CHSOR), and was Interim Chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management 2021-2022. He directs the online Masters of Applied Science in Patient Safety and Healthcare Quality, and Editor in Chief of Journal of Patient Safety and Risk Management (Sage). He is co-director of the Johns Hopkins Medicine RISE (Resilience in Stressful Events) peer support program, and founder and Board President of Baltimore CONNECT, Inc, a non-profit network of Baltimore Community Based Organizations.
He is a practicing general internist. On Twitter (aka "X") he is @withyouDrWu
Honors & Awards
ISI Highly Cited 2007.
Fellow of the American College of Physicians, 2010
Delta Omega honor society, 2012
Ernest Lyman Stebbins Medal. Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2016
John M. Eisenberg Excellence in Mentorship Award, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2019
Johns Hopkins Medicine Award for Clinical Excellence in Clinical Collaboration and Teamwork, 2019
Patient Reported Outcomes Measures (PROMs) Career Achievement Prize. Health Assessment Lab/Medical Outcomes Trust, 2019
International Academy of Quality and Safety in Health Care, Elected Member 2019
The Daily Record Health Care Heroes: 2021 COVID-19 Hero
Fred and Juliet Soper Professor of Health Policy and Management, 2022
Sigma Xi. 2023.
Doctor Honoris Causa of the Bogomolets National Medical University, Ukraine, 2023
Dr. Martin Luthor King Jr. Award for Community Service. Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Health System. 2024
Select Publications
Dr. Wu has devoted his career to improving the experience of patients receiving health care, as well as their outcomes and safety. He has published widely in the areas of patient-reported outcomes research, with a focus on assessing patient-reported outcomes (PROs), and on the quality and safety of health care.
Wu AW. Medical error: the second victim. The doctor who makes the mistake needs help too. BMJ. 2000 Mar 18;320(7237):726-7. doi: 10.1136/bmj.320.7237.726. PMID: 10720336; PMCID: PMC1117748. Wu AW, Kharrazi H, Boulware LE, Snyder CF. Measure once, cut twice--adding patient-reported outcome measures to the electronic health record for comparative effectiveness research. J Clin Epidemiol. 2013 Aug;66(8 Suppl):S12-20. doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2013.04.005. PubMed PMID: 23849145;
Wu AW, Rubin HR, Mathews WC, Ware JE Jr, Brysk LT, Hardy WD, Bozzette SA, Spector SA, Richman DD. A health status questionnaire using 30 items from the Medical Outcomes Study. Preliminary validation in persons with early HIV infection. Med Care. 1991 Aug;29(8):786-98. doi: 10.1097/00005650-199108000-00011. PMID: 1875745.
Wu AW, Connors CA, Norvell M. Adapting RISE: meeting the needs of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Int Rev Psychiatry. 2021 Dec;33(8):711-717. doi: 10.1080/09540261.2021.2013783. Epub 2022 Jan 4. PMID: 35412425.
Wu AW, Connors C, Everly GS Jr. COVID-19: Peer Support and Crisis Communication Strategies to Promote Institutional Resilience. Ann Intern Med. 2020 Jun 16;172(12):822-823. doi: 10.7326/M20-1236. Epub 2020 Apr 6. PMID: 32251512; PMCID: PMC7146593.
Wu AW, Weston CM, Ibe CA, Ruberman CF, Bone L, Boonyasai RT, Hwang S, Gentry J, Purnell L, Lu Y, Liang S, Rosenblum M. The Baltimore Community-Based Organizations Neighborhood Network: Enhancing Capacity Together (CONNECT) Cluster RCT. Am J Prev Med. 2019 Jun 25. pii: S0749-3797(19)30163-1. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2019.03.013. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 31248746.