Bourne Auguste, MD, is the Program Director for the CQuIPS Certificate Course. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto and a Staff Nephrologist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

Upasana Panda, MSc, BSc,  joined CQuIPS in 2023 as a Research Assistant. She has vast experience managing and coordinating research studies and applying scientific research methodologies. She is trained in conducting various qualitative methods and designing qualitative studies. She has an educational background in Psychology and Mental health. She has completed her Master’s in Rehabilitation Sciences from McMaster University. She brings a unique perspective to the team from her diverse experiences in the fields of education, healthcare improvement, and psychology.

Camille Borromeo Denbigh, BA Hons., CE,  comes to CQuIPS with a background in public relations, communications and medical education. She completed her undergraduate studies in communications followed by post-graduate studies in public relations.  She manages a number of initiatives at the Centre which help foster and develop the QI community, both within and external to CQuIPS. In her work, she finds innovative ways to engage and mobilize new ways of thinking. Along with leading general communications strategies for the Centre, Camille also manages the TAHSN QIPS Community of Practice, a community that spans across 15 healthcare institutions and educational organizations. Camille is inspired to use to expertise to help integrate and connect the healthcare community in meaningful ways through education, research and scholarship.

Brian Wong, MD, FRCPC, is the Director of CQuIPS, a staff general internist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr. Wong received his MD and subsequent specialty training in General Internal Medicine at the University of Toronto. After completing his residency training in 2007, he undertook a research fellowship in patient safety funded by the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation. He has co-led several major QI training programs at the University of Toronto, including the Faculty-Resident Co-Learning Curriculum, the Certificate Course in QIPS and EQUIP, and worked with academic departments at the University of Toronto to establish criteria to recognize QI and PS activities for the purposes of academic promotion. Outside of Toronto, Dr. Wong has worked with several national and international organizations, including the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, Choosing Wisely Canada, the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, the Association of American Medical Colleges and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, to establish training programs and standards to build QI and patient safety capacity across the learning continuum.

Mohita Vedhi, BA Hons., joined CQuIPS in 2017 and currently administers the Certificate Course and quality improvement workshops. She has vast experience managing and coordinating programs in healthcare and enjoys utilizing her strong program management skills to facilitate the Centre’s programs.

Patricia Trbovich, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation and cross appointed at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. She holds the Badeau Family Research Chair in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement at North York General Hospital.

Patricia leads HumanEra, a team of human factors researchers dedicated to studying and improving safety and performance in healthcare. Dr. Trbovich’s current research includes two Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) funded projects; one focused on improving opioid guidance for Canadian hospitals and a second focused on improving surgical safety by reducing safety threats and enhancing resilience supports, using the Operating Room Black Box. She also holds a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) grant focused on operator decision making during uncertainty in surgery. She has promoted knowledge of human factors engineering worldwide through her collaborations with researchers in Brazil and Spain to develop human factors expertise in their healthcare systems. She is Associate Editor for the BMJ Quality and Safety journal.

Kaveh Shojania, MD,  is Vice Chair of Quality and Innovation in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto and sees patients as a general internist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Dr. Shojania’s research focuses on identifying evidence-based patient safety interventions and effective strategies for translating evidence into practice. He has more than 160 publications indexed in Medline, including in leading journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and Lancet. From 2011-2020, Dr. Shojania was Editor-in-Chief (and then Co-Editor-in-Chief) of BMJ Quality and Safety, which rose during his tenure to have one of the highest impact factors not just for journals covering health care quality and safety, but also all of health services research, clinical informatics, medical education, and health policy. More recently, he has taken on a role as Associate Editor at JAMA Network Open.

Leahora Rotteau, PhD, oversees the general operations and the strategic priorities and activities of the Centre. She also contributes to the Centre-based research programs and brings expertise in strategic management and qualitative healthcare care research to the team. Dr. Rotteau received her PhD from the University of Toronto, Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME). Her primary research interests include the use of social theory to better understand how and why certain interventions are taken up and spread in practice and the exploration of the social and structural factors that enable the integration of care across acute, primary and community sectors.

Marie Pinard, RN, BScN, MSc, is the Director of Quality, Safety and Patient Experience at Women’s College Hospital. She has worked for over 30 years in a variety of roles including as a front-line nurse in Haematology/Oncology, a specialist in Infection Prevention & Control and Manager of Quality and Emergency Preparedness. She received her BScN at the University of Toronto and completed a MSc in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. She is passionate about quality improvement (QI), QI methodology, and QI ethics. She has experience leading hospital accreditation processes through Accreditation Canada, leading strategic projects, investigating adverse events and steering the development of the hospital’s annual Quality Improvement Plan (QIP). Marie also holds an appointment at the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

Olivia Ostrow, MD, FAAP, is an Academic Clinician and the Director for Quality and Safety for the Division of Paediatric Emergency Medicine at the Hospital for Sick Children, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto. She is a Medical Safety Leader at SickKids and the Associate Director for the hospital’s Choosing Wisely campaign. Dr. Ostrow is also the Pediatrics lead for Choosing Wisely Canada and Co-chair for the provincial Emergency Department Return Visit Quality Program with Ontario Health. Prior to becoming Associate Director in 2020, Olivia was the Faculty Quality Improvement Advisor at CQuIPS and Co-director of the Certificate Course. She is currently the Director for the Co-Learning in QI Curriculum for the Department of Paediatrics.  Dr. Ostrow is passionate about healthcare quality, safety and value and is actively involved in front-line improvement work.

Sherri Mizrachi, BA, brings more than 22 years of experience in professional office Executive Assistant positions to CQuIPS. She has a track record of strong performance in high-volume, high-pressure environments and skillfully manages administrative duties at the Centre. As Executive Assistant, she ensures the smooth operation of the department with her robust knowledge of office management, with efficient handling of internal and external stakeholder inquiries and timely access to Associate Directors and Directors as required.

Amanda Mayo, MD, MHSc, FRCPC, is a full-time Clinician in Quality Improvement Physiatrist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. She subspecializes in Amputee Rehabilitation. Dr. Mayo has a MHSc in Clinical Engineering with a focus on Human Factors Engineering and Usability of Health Technology. Her current QI focus is on improving the continuum of care for individuals with limb loss and preventing dysvascular amputations. Recent projects include reducing wait-times for outpatient rehabilitation, Implementing Prehab for vascular patients, 3D printing of prosthetics, and innovating care pathways for amputees.

Mercedes Magaz, MD, MHSc, joined CQuIPS in March 2022 after providing QI support to the Infection Prevention and Control Department at Sunnybrook for two years. She leads CQuIPS’ organizational QI capacity program where she engages and works with client organizations in co-creating workshops and supports coaching for QI projects to address institutional QI strategic priorities. Mercedes also coordinates the Toronto Academic Health Science Network (TAHSN) Quality Improvement and patient safety (QIPS) Community of practice (CoP) and the work in the three workstreams. Mercedes became passionate about quality improvement early during her training. She completed her internal medicine residency program in 2012 in Argentina, where she also served as Chief Resident. She was subsequently appointed as a staff physician in the Internal Medicine Department. Mercedes and her family arrived to Toronto in October of 2017. She graduated in 2020 from the Master Health Sciences (MHSc) Health administration program at the University of Toronto.

Lisha Lo, MPH, joined the Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety in 2010. She coordinates the EQUIP Certificate and VAQS Fellowship as well as leads and supports literature review work for Centre-based research projects. Ms. Lo received her MPH from the University of Hong Kong and worked as a research assistant before returning to Toronto, where she undertook a literature review on trigger tools. She brings experience in conducting systematic and scoping reviews, program coordination, and project management and has a keen interest in statistical process control. She recently completed a review on the association between social/structural barriers and outcomes of transition to adult care. She is currently working on reviews exploring: i) equity considerations in safety monitoring systems, ii) equity frameworks in QI, iii) best practices in diagnostic communications, and iv) the use of education/training as an intervention component in QI projects.

Joanne Goldman, PhD, is a Scientist at CQuIPS and at the Wilson Centre, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, and has an appointment at the Institute of Health Policy Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto. Dr. Goldman’s research program spans the fields of quality and safety of healthcare, health professions education and qualitative health research. She is particularly interested in studying healthcare improvement interventions and programs, education about quality improvement and patient safety, and interprofessional interactions and collaboration. Examples of her research include a study of the implementation of the Measuring and Monitoring of Safety Framework in a Canadian Collaborative; a study of the paradigms of interprofessional and quality improvement education; and a critical interpretive synthesis of the integration of equity in hospital safety monitoring systems.

Tara Burra, MD, is the Physician Lead in Quality Improvement in the Department of Psychiatry at Sinai Health. She completed her Master’s degree in health geography and then attended medical school and residency training in Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. Following her specialty training, she completed several certificate courses in QI and patient safety. For six years, Dr. Burra was the service head for adult ambulatory services and co-chaired the QI committee in the Department of Psychiatry at St. Joseph’s Health Centre, Unity Health Toronto. She has been co-facilitating the development, delivery and evaluation of the QI curriculum for Psychiatry residents at the University of Toronto since 2015. She is one of the inaugural co-leads of the Quality, Innovation, and Safety hub in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. Tara’s clinical work is in general adult psychiatry and perinatal psychiatry.