Members

Sonal Gandhi, MD, is a medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer and acute oncology at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto, as a Clinician in Quality and Innovation. Dr. Gandhi has an MSc in Health Technology Assessment. Her academic interests include targeted cancer therapy toxicity management, decreasing emergency care use, and neoadjuvant breast cancer response monitoring technologies and treatment standardization. She has led nationally recognized programs in oral anti-cancer drug management, and helped to lead and write provincial and national guidelines in breast cancer. She currently leads a novel model for oncology urgent care at her centre, and is leading work in using AI to model high risk emergency room utilization by cancer patients. She is involved in national health technology processes for approving novel cancer medications. She has dozens of academic publications and presented abstracts.

Edward Etchelles, MD, MSc, FRCPC, serves as a project mentor supporting Faculty members throughout the University who are involved in Quality Improvement work. He joined the faculty of the Department of Medicine after completing an MSc in Clinical Epidemiology. Dr. Etchell’s initial academic interest lay in clinical bioethics, with a focus on informed consent and decision making capacity. But, he realized – after five years of inpatient attending – that safe and reliable delivery of healthcare were recurrent problems. Edward conducted some of the original research that established medication reconciliation globally as a best practice in patient safety and he was a co-investigator on the Canadian Adverse Events Study. Edward co-founded the Patient Safety Service, the first hospital-based academic safety service in Canada, with support from the SHSC senior leadership team. Dr. Etchells helped to establish the Department of Medicine’s Quality Partners program in 2006 and the U of T Certificate Program in Quality and Patient Safety in 2008. He is currently Medical Director of Information Services at SHSC. His research interests include medication reconciliation, computerized medication order entry, and real time alerting and decision support for critical laboratory values.

Nely is currently the Director of Nursing Quality and Practice for Sinai Health System and the Magnet Program Director for Mount Sinai Hospital. Mount Sinai Hospital is currently the only hospital in all of Canada to achieve Magnet designation and distinction. Nely is the Magnet Program Director for this site. Magnet is a voluntary recognition process, similar to accreditation, for excellence in patient care. It is conducted by the American NursesCredentialing Centre (ANCC) and is one of the highest achievements a healthcare organization can attain. Nely has extensive experience in leading Quality, project management, and patient safety and risk review in the organization, specifically, the Women’s and Infants Health Programs.Nely’s clinical background and expertise in nursing is in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, where she has worked for over 24 years. Nely has a special interest in neonatal outcomes, in particular, the reduction of neonatal infections. Nely has just handed over her 5-year term as the EPIQ (Evidence-based Practice for Improving Quality) Co-Chair for the Nosocomial Infection Outcome group for Canada. Nely was a graduate to the Veterans Affairs Quality Scholar (VAQS)Fellowship program in 2016, successfully being the first nurse in Canada to graduate from the course and she is currently Co-Director and Faculty for the program through the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (C-QuIPPS).

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