Attendees of the Making Safety Personal Celebration with Tennessee Titans mascot T-Rac. (photo by Donn Jones)
Jenny Slayton, RN, DNP, left, Shannon Dial, RN, and Tennessee Titans mascot T-Rac pose for a photo after a raffle drawing at the Making Safety Personal Celebration. (photo by Donn Jones)
John Thomas, MD, left, with guest speaker and Patient and Family Advisory Council member Natalie-Chantel Levy-Sousan, and Tennessee Titans mascot T-Rac at the Making Safety Personal Celebration. (photo by Donn Jones)
Meg Cockrum, RN, BSN poses for a photo with her star at the Making Safety Personal Celebration. (photo by Donn Jones)
Safety Coach Leslie Hood, RN, center, with Jenny Slayton, RN, DNP, and Tennessee Titans mascot T-Rac. (photo by Donn Jones)
Guest Speaker Lynn Ferguson, Patient and Family Advisory Council member, speaks at the Making Safety Personal Celebration. (photo by Donn Jones)

On Aug. 26, the Department of Quality, Safety and Risk Prevention (QSRP) threw a Making Safety Personal Celebration in the lobby of Langford Auditorium on the Vanderbilt Health Main Campus.

Invitations went to the 438 safety coaches from across VH that have been trained by QSRP to provide front-line, real-time feedback about safety. All 268 fiscal year 2026 recipients of VH’s Good Catch and Safety Superhero awards were also invited.  

The Safety Superhero program was launched at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in 2012 to encourage staff and faculty to nominate their front-line peers for demonstrating safety skills and preventing harm to patients. The Good Catch program, launched in 2016, provides similar recognition to front-line workers across the rest of VH.

With most of these awards going to nurses and pharmacists, the winners also include techs, physicians, advanced practice providers and other front-line clinical faculty and staff. (Nominations for both safety programs can be made via the awards section of the QSRP website.)

Speakers at the celebration included Jenny Slayton, DNP, RN, Senior Vice President for Quality, Safety and Risk Prevention, and representatives of VH patient and family advisory councils. Tickets to sporting events were raffled off. T-Rac, the Tennessee Titans mascot, came to mingle.