Dr. Safa Farrag joined the Department of Medicine in the Division of Hospital Medicine as an Assistant Professor in July 2023. She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and grew up between Egypt and Iraq. She graduated from Tanta University, Egypt in 2005 with an MBBS degree. After graduation, she completed three years of intensive care residency training in Egypt. She then returned to the United States and completed her Internal Medicine residency at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center of El Paso, Texas in 2013. She subsequently became an instructor and then an assistant professor at the same program for the next four years. During this time, Dr. Farrag advanced her academic and leadership skills while serving as the sub-internship director for fourth-year medical students. She developed several curricular activities, including a procedural skills workshop, simulation training, and a boot camp training course to prepare fourth-year medical students to enter residency.
In 2017, Dr. Farrag served as a core faculty member at St. Mary’s Hospital Internal Medicine Residency Program. There, she built and established a Quality Improvement and Patient Safety Curriculum for the residency program while continuing to provide inpatient and outpatient care and supervise training residents. She coached trainees to develop quality improvement projects and was able to win the American College of Physicians (ACP) Missouri Chapter first place in the Quality Improvement category for two years in a row, in 2019 and 2020. While at St. Mary’s, Dr. Farrag earned her second board in Health Quality through the American Board of Quality Assurance and Utilization Review Physicians (ABQAURP) in October 2019. Following this, and in recognition of her academic and quality improvement achievements, Dr. Farrag was appointed as the section chief of the Ambulatory Internal Medicine division at Saint Louis University in 2020. In addition to her inpatient and outpatient care, Dr. Farrag utilized her quality improvement experience to optimize care at Saint Louis University Hospital and Clinics.
She gathered a team and successfully obtained the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) recognition through the Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) certification for the Internal Medicine Clinics. On the hospital side, she led the efforts to build the SSM transitional care clinic “The BRIDGE” to improve the transition of care process and to lower the readmission rates, among several other projects and educational activities. She was elected as the vice chair of the SLUCare Quality and Safety Committee at Saint Louis University, where she participated in developing policies and led the efforts to provide high-value care. Dr. Farrag was invited to present at multiple national and regional conferences, along with grand rounds and faculty development courses and workshops. Her key interests are hospital medicine, inpatient care, high value care, patient safety and quality Improvement. In her free time, Dr. Farrag enjoys reading, swimming, and spending time with her family and friends.