Sandra Walsh is a nursing leader at Women’s College Hospital, where she has served as Co-Chair of the Nursing Advisory Council and is now widely recognized as the departmental “go-to” for (QI). When she joined the CQuIPS Certificate Course for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, she was seconded into a professional practice nursing role and already deeply engaged in leadership and local QI initiatives. The program fundamentally shifted how she approaches change, helping her move beyond quick fixes to deeper analysis. “We mostly choose those easy first solutions that come to your mind instead of really digging down deeper into what’s really the problem.” Tangible tools such as process mapping, along with a strong emphasis on patient experience, reshaped her thinking, reminding her that “it is really all about the patient in the end.”

Sandra applied these principles to a cross-disciplinary initiative to eliminate verbal orders, navigating complex power dynamics and building trust across professional groups to implement sustainable change. Since completing the program, she has grown into a confident mentor and informal QI leader, helping colleagues think more critically about proposed solutions and sustainability. She describes gaining “a new way of thinking” that allows her to thoughtfully steer projects in the right direction, and she now actively builds QI capacity across her department. For Sandra, the Certificate Course stands out for its focus on core principles, manageable projects, and access to national leaders in the field, an experience she considers unmatched in its quality and impact. She has recently served as coaching faculty with the Certificate Course, continuing to share knowledge and building capacity.