Dr. Suzanne Beno, staff physician in Emergency Medicine and Trauma Co-Medical Director at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), joined EQUIP while leading structural and process improvements within the hospital’s Trauma Program, particularly aiming to reduce overuse of abdominal/pelvic CT imaging in low-risk pediatric trauma patients. Since completing EQUIP, she has continued to distinguish herself as a national leader in pediatric trauma and injury prevention, most recently being honoured with the SickKids President’s Award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to clinical excellence, QI, and system leadership. Through EQUIP, she gained a strong, practical foundation in QI, sharing that “EQUIP provided me with the skills and confidence to approach challenges with a solid QI framework that is grounded, pragmatic and has demonstrated success.” The program reinforced the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and patient- and family-centred approaches, emphasizing respect for diverse perspectives as central to successful improvement work. She later served as Chair of the Injury Prevention Committee of the Canadian Paediatric Society and has applied QI principles to national policy and to advancing SickKids’ pursuit of Level 1 Pediatric Trauma Centre verification, noting that seeing her EQUIP project succeed and sustain “very much gave me confidence in my ability to lead and mentor other projects.”

New this year: Patients Included status

This year marked a significant milestone: CQuIPS achieved its first-ever “Patients Included” designation, recognizing our commitment to meaningfully integrating patient partners across all aspects of planning and delivery. This notable improvement grew out of feedback from previous Symposium delegates who questioned the lack of patient and family presence.

Patient partners served on the planning committee, advised on the structure and content of the program, co-designed and co-delivered sessions, and brought their voice, perspectives and experiences to the fore. During the Opening Remarks, three patient partners set the tone for the day, emphasizing partnership, co-production, and inclusion. Later, patient partners led a dedicated breakout session, offering insights on embedding patient expertise into everyday improvement work.

CQuIPS also offered scholarships to support 20 patient partners to attend, helping ensure full participation and an immersive learning experience throughout the day.

The 2025 Annual CQuIPS Symposium is proud to be a Patients Included designated conference. This designation reflects our commitment to meaningfully integrate patients and families into every stage of the event, from planning and theme development, to speaker selection and session design and delivery. We welcome patients and families to attend the Symposium and have created full scholarships that cover registration and travel expenses for patient partners to attend. The organizing team also aims to reduce barriers to participation and has taken steps to meet the accessibly needs of all attendees.

To qualify for the Patients Included designation, conferences must meet all of the charter’s clauses. You can view the full list of requirements here: https://patientsincluded.org/conferences/

1.)    What does it mean when a conference has Patients Included designation?

Patients Included status signifies a strong commitment to incorporating the perspectives of patients and individuals with lived and living experience throughout all aspects of conference planning, design and delivery. At the CQuIPS Symposium, patient partners are centrally involved in event planning and are provided with equitable and accessible opportunities to participate fully.

2.)    How is this status achieved?

This status is achieved by meeting a 5 -point criteria designed to ensure that patient experiences are incorporated into event planning and their participation is meaningfully supported.

3.)    What does this mean for the conference experience?

A Patients Included event actively works to create an inclusive space that values and reflects diverse perspectives. At the CQuIPS Symposium, this means fostering a community where patients, families, individuals with lived and living experience and members of the public come together to learn, share and connect. The symposium is designed to support meaningful participation in a welcoming environment, with efforts made to reduce barriers and meet accessibility needs.

4.)    How has CQuIPS met these requirements?

The planning of the CQuIPS Symposium is largely led by a core committee made up of QIPS professionals and three patient partners who have strong connections to our partner organizations. These patient partners play a central role in shaping the symposium by participating in all planning meetings and contributing to key decisions, including session focus, accessibility considerations, and strategies to ensure the event meaningfully includes patients and families. All three patient partners are directly involved as presenters and/or facilitators of symposium breakout sessions as well. To support patient and family attendance at the Symposium, CQuIPS offers scholarships that cover registration and transportation costs. Accessibility needs are considered based on all participant’s, needs, with efforts made to reduce barriers and foster a welcoming experience for all.

We look forward to connecting with our community on November 13!

 Following a successful academic review, the Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS) has been renewed for another five-year term as an Extra-Departmental Unit (Category C) at the University of Toronto, affirming the Centre’s vital role in advancing quality and safety across the health system through education, research and collaborative partnerships. These next five years also represent an exciting new chapter for CQuIPS with the addition of Michael Garron Hospital (MGH).

A renewed commitment to improving healthcare quality and safety

CQuIPS’ new term, which came into effect on July 1, 2025, was approved after the review recognized it as a leading quality improvement and patient safety (QIPS) centre globally, highlighting its outsized contributions to QIPS capacity building and equity-focused research and scholarship, setting a new bar for the ways in which an EDU-C can add tangible value in the health system.

“On behalf of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, I extend my heartfelt congratulations to the Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety on its renewal,” said Dr. Lisa Robinson, Dean of the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and Vice Provost, Relations with Health Care Institutions at U of T.

“Through its rigorous research and transformative education programs, CQuIPS is strengthening quality improvement and patient safety in our hospitals, leading to improved care and more resilient and equitable health systems. The Centre’s work has had lasting impact across Canada and beyond and I look forward to learning more about its contributions in the years ahead.”

All EDUs thrive as a result of the support they receive from their funding partners. CQuIPS is no different in this regard, with the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, the Hospital for Sick Children, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Women’s College Hospital Medicine continuing to provide funding and support for an additional five-year term.

When asked to reflect on the value that CQuIPS partnership brings, Dr. Andy Smith, President and CEO of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre replied: “The return on investment for our organization has been quite simply extraordinary. The most influential and impactful senior leaders in our organization all have deep connections with CQuIPS and continue to derive exceptional value from their ongoing relationship with the Centre.”

Striving for better health outcomes through new partnerships

The addition of MGH as a new partner institution brings opportunities for cross collaboration. MGH brings a deep commitment to health equity, community engagement, and inclusive innovation, which aligns with CQuIPS’ vision “Everyone striving for better health outcomes for all”, while complementing the strengths of the current partner organizations.

“We are very proud to be the first and only large community teaching hospital to join CQuIPS,” says Melanie Kohn, President and CEO, Michael Garron Hospital. “This partnership not only recognizes our past quality and safety achievements but will allow us to further advance our work in this area through access to system leaders, industry experts and learning opportunities. We strongly believe that this partnership will have a positive impact not just on our patients but on our community-at-large.”

Christie Lockhart will assume the role of Interim Associate Director and MGH Site Lead, supporting the Centre’s operations and strategic initiatives during this period of growth. She is currently the Medical Director of Quality, Innovation and Research as well as the Chief of the Department of Midwifery and Co-Program Medical Director of Maternal Newborn & Child Health Service at Michael Garron Hospital. This new partnership model will provide CQuIPS with the necessary resources to continue its journey towards sustained growth and create new opportunities for the Centre to serve as a valued health system partner and global leader in QIPS.

Written by Camille Borromeo Denbigh in partnership with Atifa Hamir (MGH)

Each year, The Centre for Quality Improvement (CQuIPS) x Choosing Wisely Canada (CWC) Fellowship brings together a group of exceptional clinicians and researchers committed to advancing quality improvement and patient safety. This intensive, year-long program embeds Fellows in Centre-led projects and initiatives and provides mentorship and opportunities for professional development and growth.

As we look ahead to the 2025 cohort, we are excited to introduce the newest fellows who will be joining this vibrant community of healthcare improvers. Their diverse backgrounds and shared passion for driving better care will strengthen the collective impact of the fellowship — and we can’t wait to see the work they accomplish.

Chandra Farrer has been appointed as the new Associate Director for Women’s College Hospital at The Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS). Chandra is a registered physiotherapist and comes to CQuIPS with extensive Quality Improvement experience that focuses on models of care in rheumatology and improving communication for patient safety.

In 2017, she completed her Master’s in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety and subsequently assumed the role of Quality Manager and Professional Practice Specialist at WCH. She is also part of the team at Ganawishkadawe Centre for Wise Practices in Indigenous Health.

Since 2021, Chandra has long been an impactful and influential part of the CQuIPS community, taking part in many activities such as the CQuIPS Symposium Planning committee and a coach in the Certificate Course. 

Chandra will take on the role of Certificate Course Co-Director.

We asked Chandra a few questions about her new role!

What are you most looking forward to in this role?

My joy in work is derived from collaborating with teams and building QI capacity.  I am most looking forward to expanding my QI capacity building activities and enhancing my system level knowledge through connections to partner hospitals and wider communities of practice.  

Can you tell us about some of your recent QI projects that you’re most proud of?

I am most proud of my work in building QI capacity through the Best Practice Guideline in QI training program and working with patients and care partners to optimize our patient portal features. Through supporting our clinicians to understand QI fundamentals, we empower our staff to improve the health system. Participating in patient engagement to optimize the patient portal has been a transformative learning experience and helped to enable patients to access information to support their care journey.

Anything else you’d like to share with us?

I feel very fortunate to be part of both the WCH and CQuIPS communities who demonstrate commitment to equity and collaborative partnerships to drive quality care.

Congratulations to Chandra on her new role!

Written in partnership with Katie Wilson, WCH

As the 2024–25 academic year wraps up, we’re celebrating another impactful year across our education programs. From foundational learning to advanced leadership, our community continues to inspire us with its commitment to improving care.

To all our learners, faculty, mentors, collaborators, and patient partners: thank you for making this year such a success! We look forward to another inspiring and impactful year in 2025-2026!

 As Marie steps into retirement, we reflect on the indelible mark she has left our organization and on the entire QI and patient safety community.

Marie officially joined CQuIPS in 2020 as the inaugural Associate Director at Women’s College Hospital, but her influence stretches back much further. As a long-standing faculty member and coach for the Certificate Course and EQUIP, Marie brought depth, thoughtfulness, and lived experience from years of leading QI at the system level. Her passion for building QI capacity—particularly in interprofessional teams—shone through in every session she facilitated, every project she coached, and every connection she helped foster.

Under her leadership, the Certificate Course matured into a more rigorous, inclusive, and practically grounded program. Beyond her work in our education programs, her work in expanding interprofessional QI capacity at WCH was incredibly impactful. By aligning the hospital’s quality goals with CQuIPS’ educational expertise, Marie helped create a model partnership that not only elevated improvement efforts at WCH but became a standard for what collaboration between CQuIPS and partner institutions can look like.

Marie was also one of the few voices—and perhaps the most qualified—to speak to the ethical considerations of QI work, a topic she championed in the early days. Her work on developing and streamlining the QI review stream at Sick Kids filled a critical gap, ensuring that rigorous QI work could proceed efficiently while upholding ethical standards.

Marie distinguished herself as a trusted leader who championed ethical, high-quality QI, building interprofessional engagement, promoting language-concordant care, advancing responsible data-sharing across TAHSN, and working collectively to adopt a common approach across organizations to reduce preventable harm to patients. Whether advising on project design or delivering lectures, she brough intellectual rigour, humility, and deep care for patients and teams. Marie leaves a legacy through the learners she inspired, projects she strengthened, and the culture of thoughtfulness and excellence she helped shape.

Marie, your retirement marks the end of a remarkable era—but your impact will continue to shape CQuIPS and the QI community for years to come.

As global leaders in quality improvement and patient safety, CQuIPS is proud to oversee the SQuIRE (Standards for Quality Improvement Reporting Excellence) international writing guidelines. Since becoming stewards of the guidelines in October 2023, the team at CQuIPS has been collaborating with an advisory committee comprised of international leaders in quality improvement and patient safety and journal editors to promote the accessibility and adoption of SQuIRE across the healthcare improvement field. An evidence-informed process to update the SQuIRE guidelines to SQuIRE 3.0 has begun.

SQuIRE 2.0 serves as the gold standard for reporting QI research and scholarship. The current version of SQuIRE, SQuIRE 2.0, was revised in 2015 and is listed on the EQUATOR Network’s main webpage (the EQUATOR Network is the leading authority on academic writing and reporting guidelines). These guidelines provide a critical framework for ensuring QI research is rigorous, reproducible, and impactful. Beyond reporting, SQuIRE has also been adopted by leading international QI education programs as their formal teaching framework to provide guidance on how to conduct QI work. 

CQuIPS’ connection to SQuIRE has been well established over the years as key CQuIPS faculty have been involved in previous developments and updates. Kaveh Shojania and Ross Baker both served as SQuIRE 2.0 advisory committee members. Brian Wong, was a contributor to the development of the SQuIRE 2.0 EDU extension, and Jerome Leis co-authored the SQuIRE Explanation & Elaboration supplement to the SQuIRE 2.0 guidelines.

By taking on oversight of the SQuIRE guidelines, CQuIPS becomes the international standard bearer for QI and is committed to ensuring the guidelines are relevant and reflective of the ever evolving and growing QIPS field. The updated SQuIRE 3.0 guidelines will provide clearer guidance on the rigorous application of QI methods and tools and include an explicit focus on equity considerations.

Updating SQuIRE 3.0 is a priority for the CQuIPS team. Lead by SQuIRE 3.0 co-leads, Kaveh Shojania and Leahora Rotteau, the SQuIRE 3.0 update initiative includes three phases; data collection to inform key potential changes to SQuIRE, a consensus meeting to finalize changes, and SQuIRE 3.0 user testing and refinement.

We are currently in the data collection phase. We have completed a website scan of key healthcare improvement and clinical journals and a series of qualitative interviews with QI leaders, educators and journal editors. We are also completing a large systematic review of QI and improvement research publications to characterize the application of SQuIRE and other common QI concepts. The consensus meeting will take place in the Fall of 2025 followed by user testing. Kaveh Shojania and Leahora Rotteau will be presenting this work at the upcoming International Forum on Quality & Safety in Utrecht, The Netherlands in May 2025.

The team at CQuIPS has been working to update the SQuIRE website. You can view it here!: www.squire-statement.org

For more information on The Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, visit: www.cquips.ca