Starting July 1, Mary Hawn, the current director of gastrointestinal surgery and vice chair for quality and clinical effectiveness at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, will be serving as the new chair of the Department of Surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Lloyd Minor, M.D., dean of the School of Medicine, explained that Hawn is highly qualified for the position.

“Dr. Hawn is an accomplished surgeon and health-services researcher with training in basic science research, making her uniquely poised to lead our world-class surgery department at Stanford Medicine,” said Minor, as reported by Stanford Medicine News Center.

One of Hawn’s major interests is surgical quality and effectiveness, with a focus on directly improving patient care.

“I want to inspire everybody to do the right thing for the patient every time,” Hawn said. “I’ve also learned to communicate that just because we try something doesn’t mean we’ll do it forever; change can be more of an experiment. If that change doesn’t work, we won’t keep doing it.”

Minor has also expressed his gratitude to the current chair of the Department of Surgery, Thomas Krummel, who has consistently sought to improve the School of Medicine over his service of 15 years.

“Tom has expertly guided Stanford to national prominence in academic surgery, quadrupled the surgical department’s research funding and doubled its number of faculty,” Minor said.

Contact Batuhan Balci at bbalci ‘at’ stanford.edu.