Dr Harrington recently left clinical practice after nearly 40 years as a Board-Certified Cardiothoracic surgeon.  For the majority of his career, he practiced at several major Detroit area hospitals as a private practice physician.  For the last 5 years of his career, he was privileged to be a member of the Henry Ford Medical Group, a part of the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit.  In addition to his surgical and patient care duties he served on multiple committees, chaired his divisions, was co-developer of the HFHS Heart and Vascular Institute and co-leader of the system’s Cardiovascular Clinical Council, responsible for quality, program development and business integration for the HFHS cardiovascular service line. He has served on multiple MEC’s as well as hospital and health system boards leading quality and strategic development initiatives.  Despite no longer being involved in direct patient care he has remained very active with the Michigan Society of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeons’ Quality Collaborative in both clinical research and peer review, co-authoring several publications in peer reviewed journal.  He serves nationally with the Society of Thoracic Surgeons on the Workforce on Patient Safety and the Task Force on Quality Initiatives.  He also works with Corazon Inc., a national consulting firm, focusing on cardiovascular program and quality and peer review.  As well as his medical degree he also holds an MBA in Healthcare Administration and Quality.  Although he has many other outside interests, he is an avid aviator flying over 100 hours yearly. More importantly he studies Aviation Safety and Accident Avoidance and Human Factors Engineering, taking the lessons learned from those studies and applying those principles and  safety practices learned in aviation to how we can, and should improve in our daily medical and surgical practices.