Petrina Griesbach, RN, is the Director of Data Quality at Verana Health.
What do you do at Verana?
I manage the Data Quality team at Verana. My role is about aligning people to projects that support Verana’s key strategic initiatives, and ensuring the highest quality products and scientific evidence are available to meet the customer’s needs.
Tell me more about the Data Quality team at Verana.
Data Quality’s work spans every part of Verana’s data pipeline and the data used in every project or product. It’s not so much about knowing if the result of an analysis is right or wrong, it’s understanding the process of how we got to that result and if that result is reasonable and clinically pertinent. The Data Quality team is responsible for conducting cross-functional quality checks and building transparent processes for projects and products, since each team at Verana focuses on specific aspects of producing high quality data. We target and ensure systemic quality issues are fixed across the data pipeline.
How have your experiences as a nurse impacted your work in quality?
The saying is true, “Once you’re a nurse you’re always a nurse”. Nurses are problem solvers and can stay calm in adverse situations. As an emergency department registered nurse I encountered unplanned emergent situations every day. We trained for the majority of these and used evidence-based protocols so we could ensure the best outcome. Quality requires that same rigor and ability to problem-solve using expertise that we have developed to produce repeatable and predictable results.
Why did you decide to join Verana?
Prior to Verana, I was the Director of Analytics at Stanford University and Quality Director of the Stanford Medical Group. Having a clinical background, I have treated the patients that make up the data points our institution collected, and I know these data points tell a story. I like that Verana uses data to support the clinician at the bedside by leveraging large, high quality patient datasets to accelerate research, and by doing so, shifting patient care to offer the latest advances in medicine. I have family and friends who suffer from chronic and acute ophthalmic or neurologic conditions and are hoping for a treatment for their condition. These are the people Verana is helping.
What should someone who is thinking of joining Verana know?
Verana is an open, honest, and trusting place where we can communicate and share mistakes when they happen and learn how we can do it differently next time. At Verana, your contribution is making a difference in the patient and clinical communities. While we’re not interacting with patients directly every day, we are directly supporting the people that do.
Share a fun fact about you!
I left Australia when I was 18 to my first home away from home in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, named after Chief Sleepy Eye. I stayed with a family and my U.S. “dad” was and is a physician. One day we were driving into town and a driver on the other side of the road swerved and drove into a large tree next to us. My dad got out of the car and immediately knew she was having a seizure and what to do. I felt powerless yet in awe of my dad’s calm and knowledge, and that’s when I decided to become a registered nurse.
Interested in learning about opportunities to join the Verana Data Science team? View a list of open opportunities here.