Tahara Bhate is a staff emergency physician with University Health Network (UHN). She completed her residency training at the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary and holds a Masters in Clinical Epidemiology from the University of British Columbia, where she also completed her medical undergraduate studies.
From a clinical research background, her interest in patient safety and systems improvement evolved from efforts to use simulation-based interventions to improve outcomes during Rapid Response Team activations. Supported by a Helios Fellowship from the University of Calgary, she completed the CQuIPS EQUIP program in 2020 and has gone on to develop an academic interest in incorporating novel methodologies such as human factors analyses and simulation into traditional QI frameworks, most recently using simulation to address the issue of patient flow efficiency in the emergency department. Her fellowship will focus on developing methodological tools to support robust evaluation of innovative system interventions.
Amanda Cipolla is an obstetrician gynecologist at Credit Valley Hospital, Trillium Health Partners (THP) in Mississauga, Ontario. She has six years of clinical QI experience as the QI lead of the Women’s Department of THP. She earned her medical degree and completed her residency training at the University of Toronto. After a year in clinical independent practice, Amanda became interested in QI work and pursued the CQuIPS Certificate Course. She has lead initiatives aimed at safely reducing cesarean section rates, both locally at THP and through involvement in multi-site projects in the GTA. Her main focus has been on implementation science and encouraging and facilitating the uptake of evidence-based practice in routine clinical care.
Jacquie Follis has been an RN for more than 30 years. She has a background in pediatrics and experience in the pediatric ICU, pediatric emergency department and inpatient pediatric endocrinology, nephrology and general care. Jacquie has been working at Women’s College Hospital since 2008 after completing her Master of Science in Nursing at D’Youville College in Buffalo, NY.
Jacquie is passionate about improving care and safety for patients and has completed an Advanced Clinical Practice Fellowship from the RNAO looking at transitions in care between a pediatric organization and an adult organization; a Certificate in Ombuds from York learning how to address patient complaints and concerns; and CQuIPS’ Certificate Course.
Most recently, Jacquie was the Interim Manager of the Covid Assessment Center and Vaccinations at the West End YMCA. She applied her previous training and experience to create high functioning and safe program that provided personalized care in a high volume, high turnover environment. Jacquie is looking forward to utilizing this opportunity in her new role as an Advanced Practice Nurse in Professional Practice and as Lead, Best Practice Spotlight Organization, RNAO.
Susanna Fung is a community family physician and assistant professor at the University of Toronto. She is the Quality Improvement Director in the Department of Family & Community Medicine at Scarborough Health Network (SHN). She teaches QI methodology to family medicine residents, graduate students and family medicine preceptors. She has an interest in medical education and has supervised residents and medical students. She is currently involved in organizing a QI course for the Health Equity Certificate Program at SHN.
Katie Gardner is a pediatric emergency physician at IWK Health in Halifax and an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Dalhousie University. She serves as the Director of Quality and Patient Safety for the division of pediatric emergency medicine and completed CQuIPS’ EQUIP program in 2021. Through this role, Katie has been involved in initiatives to improve flow in the emergency department as well as standardizing care through the development of multiple care pathways. Her recent QI work has focused on building a virtual care program in the ED. Katie is also interested in working with regional centres to further improve emergency care for children across all settings.
Andrea Hatherell is a clinical speech-language pathologist (SLP) and is also currently in the role of Senior Quality and Process Improvement Specialist at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. She is the Clinical Education Liaison at Holland Bloorview and has status appointment at the University of Toronto’s Department of Speech-Language Pathology. Andrea is a graduate of the Masters of Science in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety program at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the University of Toronto.
Andrea is passionate about developing efficient and effective interprofessional processes to increase access to pediatric rehabilitation services. She is interested in change management and engaging interprofessional teams of clinicians to build QI and safety knowledge to build sustainability in improvement work. Andrea is also interested in developing her QI teaching and education abilities to represent and share the pediatric rehabilitation quality and safety lens.
Dana Mayer received her medical degree from the University of Ottawa and completed her residency in family medicine at the University of Toronto. She then completed a one-year fellowship in hospitalist medicine at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. She practices hospitalist medicine at Sunnybrook as well as outpatient family medicine, with a focus on care of the elderly and palliative care.
Dana is a graduate of CQuIPS’ EQUIP program. Her QI and research work has focused on transitions in care and direct admissions to an acute care medical ward for patients from long-term care facilities. Dana has been involved in teaching residents in the community and academic family medicine clinics.
Preetika Muthukrishnan is an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Vermont, Larner College of Medicine and an academic hospitalist at the affiliated University of Vermont Medical Center. In addition to her clinical practice, Preetika holds a number of teaching and administrative appointments. She is co-faculty of the Internal Medicine Resident Quality Improvement Curriculum, where she mentors second year residents in the implementation of a QI project using active learning techniques. She leads the division of hospital medicine’s QI efforts across the institution. She is also the medical director of the hospital-wide emergency response teams; she works with a multidisciplinary team to oversee daily operations, identify gaps in quality metrics and implement solutions. She is also co-director of the Internal Medicine Resident Mock Code Curriculum.
Erica Patterson is a clinical nurse specialist for interprofessional practice. In this role, she leads multiple hospital-wide programs and projects including the sepsis program and SickKids’ comfort promise initiative. She has a Bachelor of Science of Nursing from McMaster University and a Masters of Nursing- Leadership in Health Policy and Education from Toronto Metropolitan University. Erica also works part time as a RN on the bone marrow transplant unit where she cares for pediatric oncology and hematology patients admitted to hospital. Erica also holds an adjunct lecturer position with the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Toronto.
Katrina Piggott received her medical degree from the University of Toronto. She completed her residency in internal medicine at McMaster University and subspecialty training in geriatric medicine at the University of Toronto. She practices inpatient and outpatient geriatric medicine based at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.
Katrina pursued a Masters in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) at the University of Toronto. She now teaches in the IHPME masters program, and is the co-director for the Division of Geriatric Medicine Co-Learning Quality Improvement Training Program. Her scholarly work aims to improve care for older adults living in long-term care homes and living in the community, and improving care practices that create harm and waste in the healthcare system. Her clinical interests include drug safety for older adults, delirium prevention, and improvement of safety and the older adult experience while admitted to hospital.
Holly Rector graduated from the University of Virginia with her Master of Science in Nursing and Doctor of Nursing Practice degrees. During her doctorate, she was also an Interprofessional Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Scholar which provided her with additional training in interprofessional collaboration and quality improvement methodology. Her dissertation focused on enhancing patient engagement for individuals hospitalized with acute myocardial infarction.
Holly currently practices as an adult nurse practitioner in cardiology at Women’s College Hospital (WCH) and is appointed as Adjunct Faculty at Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing. In her current role, Holly’s QI and research interest are focused on program evaluation of a discharge heart failure clinic and virtual coronary artery disease clinic. She is also interested in evaluation of the patient experience and enhancing patient engagement. In addition to her clinic work, she regularly volunteers as a an interprofessional education facilitator for the University of Toronto healthcare disciplines and is involved in the Quality Improvement Research Committee at WCH.
William Silverstein completed his medical school and internal medicine training at the University of Toronto, where he also served as Chief Medical Resident at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. He has completed a Master of Science with a concentration in QIPS at the University of Toronto and an editorial fellowship at JAMA Internal Medicine for their Teachable Moments Series. He is currently completing a fellowship in general internal medicine at the University of Toronto. His academic interests lie at the intersection of QI, patient safety, resource stewardship and health services research.
Seychelle Yohanna is an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at McMaster University and a transplant nephrologist at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton. She completed a Master of Science in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety at the University of Toronto. Her academic focus is improving access to kidney transplantation and living kidney donation for patients in Ontario with chronic kidney disease. She has a particular interest in removing system barriers to living kidney donation and leads the Hamilton One-Day Living Kidney Donor Assessment Clinic. Seychelle also leads the implementation of patient safety rounds across all clinical programs at McMaster, is heavily involved in teaching QIPS to medical trainees, participates in several hospital QIPS committees and supervises several QIPS research projects at her institution.