James B. Battles, PhD

Social Science Analyst for Patient Safety
Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS)
Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ)

Dr. Battles is a native of Ohio where he did his undergraduate education at Miami University and received his doctorate in medical education from the Ohio State University. In November 2000, Dr. Battles joined the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in Rockville, Maryland as Senior Service Fellow for Patient Safety interventions. He also leads AHRQ’s efforts in the assessment of patient safety culture and improving team work in collaboration with the Department of Defense. He is an internationally recognized expert in the area of patient safety. Having authored numerous articles and book chapters in the past several years. Prior to coming to AHRQ, he was Professor of Medical Education at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas where he was co-principal investigator for the Medical Event Reporting System for Transfusion Medicine (MERS-TM), funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has served as a prototype for a national system of reporting near miss events in health care. In addition to his patient safety research, he is an internationally recognized medical educator for his work in Problem Based Learning (PBL), the use of Standardized Patients for teaching and evaluation, and the Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation (OSCE) and faculty and curriculum development. Dr. Battles was director and principal investigator for a federally funded (HRSA) fellowship and faculty development program for new primary care residency and per-doctoral programs at UT Southwestern. Prior to going to Texas, Dr. Battles served as Director of the Ohio Regional Medical Audiovisual Consortium (ORMAC), an educational cooperative of the seven medical schools in Ohio. Dr. Battles is retired Captain in the United States Navy, specializing in surface warfare, strategic planning and systems design.