Kathy Aulson, RN, JD, CPPS, CFRN

Kathy Aulson, RN, JD, CPPS, CFRN has dedicated her career to advancing patient safety through High Reliability, transparency, and partnership. With extensive experience in emergency/critical care nursing, flight nursing, risk management, patient safety, and healthcare law, she created Journey to Zero Harm to help advance the transformation of healthcare through High Reliability principles. She particularly champions the principle of deference to expertise—recognizing patients, families, and frontline caregivers as essential members of the healthcare team.

Her passion for patient safety is both professional and personal, having experienced the loss of a family member due to medical error. That profound experience strengthened her conviction that the safest organizations recognize expertise by proximity, not position. To Kathy, the frontline includes everyone closest to the patient because those individuals are ultimately closest to the solution. She firmly believes healthcare becomes safer only when every voice is encouraged, respected, and heard.

As a member of Patients for Patient Safety US, Kathy is committed to transforming the experiences and insights of patients and families into lasting system improvements. She also teaches a "Defensive Driving Course for Patients and Families," empowering individuals to ask questions, recognize risks, communicate concerns, and become active partners in preventing medical harm. Kathy is currently writing her first book, Speechless: The Oppression of the Front Line, which explores how healthcare systems can achieve true safety by recognizing and elevating the voices of those closest to the patient.