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Sigall K. Bell, MD - Co-Director of Patient Safety and Quality Initiatives

As Co-Director of Patient Safety and Quality Initiatives, Sigall’s work at the Institute focuses on developing and teaching programs building teamwork and communication strategies for medical error disclosure and prevention.

“Yeats once said, ‘Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.’ IPEP programs bring the patient experience to life, providing participants with a safe space to grapple with losses, hopes, and the language of caring. The Institute’s approach to learning cultivates kindness, curiosity, and the capacity to appreciate multiple perspectives. In my view as an educator, this is the ‘fire’ to which Yeats refers.”

Sigall earned her MD from Harvard Medical School, completed residency training in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC). Her academic interests focus on communication, patient safety, and humanism in patient care. Interested in understanding what patients, families, and clinicians experience following medical error, she co-developed a DVD-based curriculum addressing the human dimension of medical error, and studied the attitudes and perceptions about error disclosure and apology. Her research interests also include understanding the effects of the “hidden curriculum” on patient safety and humanism. A recipient of several awards, she regularly teaches medical students, residents, and faculty, and lectures regionally, nationally, and internationally. Her work is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Academic Medicine, and the New York Times.

Sigall’s clinical work centers on HIV care. She trained at the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and has participated in clinical and public health efforts around the world to better understand the patients’ experience of illness on a global scale, the magnitude and impact of the HIV epidemic, and the complex inter-relationships of humans, microorganisms, society, poverty, politics, and culture. She is the BIDMC site director for the Harvard Medical School Patient-Doctor III course, and director of a medical student writing program. Both courses emphasize reflective practice and humanism in medicine.