Linda Akuamoah-Boateng, MHA ’08

Raised in Ghana, trained in Amsterdam and Boston, working at Massachusetts General Hospital

Linda Akuamoah-Boateng works for one of the nation’s leading hospitals, Massachusetts General, in quality and patient safety, one of the hottest healthcare fields.

As Senior Project Specialist with Patient Care Services (PCS) Office of Quality and Safety, she provides overall support for initiatives to improve work processes; guides and monitors performance; and collects, rigorously analyzes, synthesizes, and disseminates data to improve safety and quality and ensure regulatory compliance. (A cover story in PCS’s Caring magazine features Linda’s team.)

Raised in Ghana, in a family of clinicians, Linda earned a BS in physical therapy at the European School of Physiotherapy in The Netherlands and became a licensed therapist. Internships and volunteer work at a hospital in Cape Coast, Ghana, strengthened her desire to make healthcare readily available to all Ghanaians regardless of ability to pay.

To learn how healthcare can be better administered, Linda opted for grad school. She chose Suffolk’s MHA program because of its relatively small size, diverse student body, and excellent faculty; she wanted “to learn from the best.”

Suffolk students were themselves a resource, she notes. “Students already working in healthcare, law, and business offered valuable perspectives.” And Suffolk “really helps international students,” she reports. (She serves as an advisor to Suffolk’s International Healthcare Students Group.)

She also valued the way Suffolk bridges theory and practice by linking students with professionals in the field through internships and mentoring. Interning at Mass General led to her current job. “Suffolk gave me a lot,” she reflects. “I didn’t know the US healthcare system; now I’m working in it.

Her career advice to students is “Seek opportunities to showcase your skills.” Even applying for fellowships can introduce you to healthcare executives. And, get experience: “You have to prove you can survive in the US healthcare system,” she stresses. And, keep learning, as she does at Mass General and through ACHE, the National Patient Safety Foundation, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

Linda’s primary interests are now patient safety, quality improvement, and strategic and operations management. She wants to integrate a focus on quality and safety into Ghana’s delivery of basic health care. This won’t be easy. In Ghana, translating her physical therapy training into practice had required improvisation: some equipment was lacking.

When it comes to organizing a hospital, the US model will require translation, too. Suffolk doesn’t have a course for that – yet. But its growing network of international healthcare alumni can surely help.

Posted October 2009