Mairead Hickey, PhD, RN, FAAN, FAHA, Executive VP, Chief Operating Officer

Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Mairead Hickey, PhD, RN, FAAN, FAHA, is executive vice president and chief operating officer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH).  Before assuming this role in September 2010, Hickey held several executive leadership positions, including chief nursing officer and senior vice president of Patient Care Services, vice president of Women’s Health and Specialty Services. She also led performance improvement and quality programs at BWH for several years. As chief nurse and senior vice president of Patient Care Services, she cultivated a strategic vision for the Department of Nursing that advanced the practice of nursing and compassionate care for patients and families and supported clinical development and research efforts. During her tenure as chief nurse, she also led the hospital in developing a philosophy and model for patient- and family-centered care. In each of her roles, Hickey brings the strategic ability to collaborate and affect improvements and change across disciplines and departments.

Hickey’s commitment to the success of BWH began when she became a staff nurse and nursing instructor at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital after graduating with her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Boston College. She left BWH for slightly more than a decade to assume the position of associate professor and chair of the graduate program for clinical nurse specialists at Yale University, during which time she received her PhD in 1990 from the University of Connecticut.

In addition to serving as chief nursing officer at BWH, Hickey has held adjunct faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public HealthandBoston College School of Nursing. She is widely published with dozens of peer-reviewed papers on topics such as quality and safety in nursing care and the needs of families of critically ill patients to her credit.