The 97-bed neonatal intensive care unit at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital cares for the tiniest patients. The premature infants who are too young to swallow are kept alive with total parenteral nutrition (TPN), an intravenous mix of fluids, fats, carbohydrates, electrolytes, vitamins and minerals.

As a resident at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, Jacquelyn Crews helped change the system, reducing the risk to patients and saving time for clinicians and pharmacists.

Crews worked with neonatologist Fauzia Shakeel to standardize and automate calculations and the ordering of TPN. As a result, formulation errors dropped from 26 percent to less than 2 percent.

“We started the project early in my residency, so I got to see the changes in action,” Crews says. “People say it’s much simpler now to order TPN. They just click two buttons. It’s making the hospital safer and reducing costs.”

The experience helped Crews realize that she wants to focus on improving the way hospitals operate. It’s a natural direction for Crews, who earned finance and international business degrees at the University of Florida.

She will continue making the hospital more efficient in her new role as co-chief resident of JHACH, overseeing resident training and patient care alongside John Morrison, a fellow 2017 graduate, who is from Iowa City, Iowa.

“I realized I want to make a difference in people’s lives by improving the system,” says Crews, who grew up in Weston, Florida. “I have a specific interest in tinkering with cause and effect and how to change models.”

—Karen Nitkin