Joel Judovich Nobel (December 8, 1934 – August 13, 2014)''Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014''.

Social Security Administration The United States Social Security Administration (SSA) is an Independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, U.S. federal government that administers Social Security (United ...

. was an American anesthesiologist and

patient safety Patient safety is a discipline that emphasizes safety in health care through the prevention, reduction, reporting and analysis of error and other types of unnecessary harm that often lead to adverse patient events. The frequency and magnitude of a ...

advocate best known for founding the

crash cart A crash cart or code cart (crash trolley in UK medical jargon) or "MAX cart" is a set of trays/drawers/shelves on wheels used in hospitals for transportation and dispensing of emergency medication/equipment at site of medical/surgical emergency ...

and

ECRI Institute ECRI (originally founded as Emergency Care Research Institute) is an independent nonprofit organization tasked with "improving the safety, quality, and cost-effectiveness of care across all healthcare settings worldwide." History In the early 19 ...

Early life and education

Nobel was born in Pennsylvania, one of three children born to

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

doctors Dr. Golda R. Nobel and Dr. Bernard D. Judovich. His mother was a psychiatrist who lived to age 107, while his father was a general practitioner. Nobel graduated from Friends Select School in 1952. He earned an undergraduate degree in English from

Haverford College Haverford College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), began accepting non-Quakers in 1849, and became coeducational ...

in 1956, followed by a master's in international relations from the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

in 1958 and a medical degree from

Jefferson Medical College Thomas Jefferson University is a private research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Established in its earliest form in 1824, the university officially combined with Philadelphia University in 2017. To signify its heritage, the univer ...

in 1963. His residency was interrupted by the Vietnam War, when he served in the Navy.

Career

In 1968, a four-year-old patient of his at the Presbyterian Hospital at

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is a $23billion integrated global nonprofit health enterprise that has 92,000 employees, 40 hospitals with more than 8,000 licensed beds, 800 clinical locations including outpatient sites and do ...

died due to a faulty

bag valve mask A bag valve mask (BVM), sometimes known by the proprietary name Ambu bag or generically as a manual resuscitator or "self-inflating bag", is a hand-held device commonly used to provide positive pressure ventilation to patients who are not breathin ...

. Nobel, who had alerted others on the staff several times that it was not working properly, was deeply affected by the child's death. "Anger is a great source of energy," he later wrote of the reaction to the incident. Nobel tested others of those devices on the market and found many to be ineffective. After failing to find anyone to publish his findings, he set up the Emergency Care Research Institute in the 1960s (now ECRI Institute) to publish the ''Health Devices Journal'', which shared information about medical devices. Nobel invented the MAX cart, which was a new type of

Personal life

He was married first to Bonnie Sue Goldberg, and later to Qingqing Lu. He died at his

Gladwyne, Pennsylvania Gladwyne is a suburban community in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, United States along the historic Philadelphia Main Line. In 2018, Gladwyne was ranked the sixth richest ZIP code (using 2015 IRS data) in the country in a ...

home from complications of cancer and diabetes, at age 79. He was survived by his sons Joshua and Adam, and daughter Erika.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nobel, Joel J 1934 births 2014 deaths American anesthesiologists Patient safety 20th-century American Jews Jewish physicians Haverford College alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni Jefferson Medical College alumni 21st-century American Jews