Healthcare Speakers

John J. Nance brings a rich and varied professional background to American Healthcare and the cause of Patient Safety. A lawyer, Air Force and airline pilot, prolific internationally-published author, national broadcaster, and professional speaker, he was one of the founding board members of the National Patient Safety Foundation in 1997.

John is a native Texan who grew up in Dallas, holds a Bachelor’s Degree from SMU and a Juris Doctor from SMU’s Dedman School of Law, and is a licensed Texas attorney. Named Distinguished Alumni of SMU for 2002, and distinguish Alumni for Public Service of the SMU Dedman School of Law in 2010, he is also a decorated Air Force pilot veteran of Vietnam and Operations Desert Storm/Desert Shield and a Lt. Colonel in the USAF Reserve, well known for his pioneering development of Air Force human factors flight safety education, and one of the civilian pioneers of Crew Resource Management (CRM). John has piloted a wide variety of jet aircraft, including most of Boeing’s line and the Air Force C-141, and has logged over 13,700 hours of flight time since earning his first pilot license in 1965, and is still a current pilot. He was a pilot for Braniff International Airlines and a Boeing 737 Captain for Alaska Airlines, and is an internationally recognized air safety advocate, best known to North American television audiences as Aviation Analyst for ABC World News and Aviation Editor for Good Morning America.

Before joining ABC, John logged countless appearances on national shows such as Larry King Live, PBS Hour with Jim Lehrer, Oprah, NPR, Nova, the Today Show, and many others. He is also the nationally-known author of 19 major books, five of them non-fiction: (Splash of Colors, Blind Trust, On Shaky Ground, What Goes Up and Golden Boy); plus 13 international fiction bestsellers: Final Approach, Scorpion Strike; Phoenix Rising); Pandora’s Clock; Medusa’s Child; The Last Hostage; Blackout; Fire Flight; Saving Cascadia; and Orbit. Pandora’s Clock and Medusa’s Child both aired as major, successful two-part mini-series on television.

He is also the author of the highly-acclaimed 2009 book for American Healthcare entitled WHY HOSPITALS SHOULD FLY, which won the prestigious “Book of the Year” award for 2009 from the American College of Healthcare Executives.

John J. Nance has become one of America’s most dynamic and effective professional speakers, presenting entertaining and pivotal programs on teamwork, risk management, motivation, coping with competition, and other topics to a wide variety of audiences, including business corporations and healthcare professionals. He and fellow author Kathleen Bartholomew (Ending Nurse-to-Nurse Hostility – Why Nurses Eat their Young and Each Other), present vital programs on Quality and Patient Safety to Hospital Boards, Physicians and Physician Leaders and Hospital Management Nationally and Internationally.

He is a pioneering and well-known advocate of using the lessons from the recent revolution in aviation safety to equally revolutionize the patient safety performance of hospitals, doctors, nurses and all of healthcare.