SUSAN AUCOTT

Greater Baltimore Medical Center

Dr. Susan Aucott has built her career around clinical excellence, advancing it through both her own work and the programs around her. As director of neonatology at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, she has spent the past six years transforming clinical care since stepping into the role in 2020. That move followed 23 years at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, where she was instrumental in developing NICU protocols and clinical care and in training future neonatologists.

At GBMC, Aucott has grown the physician and advanced practitioner group, developed new and innovative care delivery and promoted multidisciplinary collaboration. Her leadership extends to the state level through the Perinatal Clinical Advisory Committee and the Maryland Institute for Emergency Services Systems, where she has helped establish guidelines and standards for perinatal and neonatal care. Nationally, she works through the American Academy of Pediatrics Section of Neonatal Perinatal Medicine in a variety of roles and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Perinatology.

A recent quality project in the GBMC NICU illustrates her approach. The team set out to improve how often parents held their preterm infants in the first 24 hours of life, a measure that had a baseline of 50%. Aucott and her colleagues developed staff education on the safety and benefits of skin-to-skin holding, then ran simulation sessions to build comfort with moving fragile infants and to identify barriers. The rate has since climbed to more than 90%, yielding documented medical benefits along with immeasurable gains in parental bonding.

She counts mentorship as her most significant personal accomplishment. As fellowship training director at Johns Hopkins, she guided many pediatricians through their training to become neonatologists, and many now hold leadership positions across the Baltimore-Washington region.

At GBMC, she continues to mentor neonatologists, advanced practitioners and nursing staff through ongoing education, career development, protocol review and quality improvement work.