Date and time

Tuesday May 21, 2024  (12-1 p.m. ET)

Session Description: 

One of the most effective uses of the SQUIRE Publication Guidelines is to plan improvement work.  Similarly, SQUIRE Guidelines provide a robust improvement framework for teaching Quality Improvement to graduate nursing students. This presentation will share models of how using the SQUIRE Publication Guidelines to teach Quality Improvement in graduate nursing programs prepare clinical nurse leaders to guide rigorous, effective improvement, and then disseminate their work. Specifically, Gail will focus on how using the SQUIRE Guidelines to standardize the process, content and structure of the DNP Project has been a helpful model for both faculty and learners.

Date and time

Tuesday June 18, 2024  (12-1 p.m. ET)

Session Description: 

In this session, two associate editors from BMJ Quality and Safety will review selected and impactful papers in QIPS from the past year. Participants will be introduced to current trends and hot topics in the field to inform their own QIPS research and local healthcare improvement efforts.

Date and time

Tuesday, April 18, 2023, 12-1 p.m. ET

Summary Description

OurCare is a 12-month national initiative to engage members of the public on the future of primary care in Canada. This session will review findings from Phases 1 and 2 of the project—the national research survey and the Ontario provincial reference panel. We will reflect on lessons learned through the process and discuss the potential for engaging the public to influence health policy.

Speaker bios

Dr. Tara Kiran is the Fidani Chair in Improvement and Innovation and Vice-Chair Quality and Innovation at the Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto. She practices family medicine with the St. Michael’s Hospital Academic Family Health Team and is an associate professor at the University of Toronto in the Faculty of Medicine and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME). Her research seeks to improve quality in primary care by influencing policy and practice.

Peter MacLeod is the founder and principal of MASS LBP, and one of Canada’s leading experts in public engagement and deliberative democracy. Since its founding in 2007, MASS has completed more than 200 major policy projects for governments and public agencies across Canada while popularizing the use of Civic Lotteries and Citizens’ Assemblies, and earning international recognition for its work.

Peter frequently writes and speaks about citizens’ experience of the state, the importance of public imagination and the future of responsible government.

A graduate of the University of Toronto and Queen’s University, MacLeod is the past chair of Toronto’s Wellesley Institute for Urban Health and currently serves on the boards of the Environics Institute and the YMCA of Greater Toronto. He is also an adjunct lecturer at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto.

Date and time:

Tuesday, December 12, 2023, 12-1 

Session Description:

The Return Visit Quality Program is a mandatory audit program for Ontario’s largest emergency departments (EDs). It aims to build a culture of quality through the routine audit of cases of patients who were discharged from the ED and then returned within 72hrs requiring hospitalization in order to uncover potential adverse events and/or quality issues. Since 2016, this program has led to thousands of audits and hundreds of quality improvement projects throughout the province. As co-leads of the program, the presenters will review the infrastructure of the program along with the enablers and challenges for developing a community of practice over time.

Speaker bios:

Lucas Chartier is a healthcare leader and innovator driven by the pursuit of better quality and safer patient care for all. He serves as Vice President, Quality & Safety and Chief Patient Safety Officer at the University Health Network (UHN), where he also works as an emergency physician. Lucas is the Lead for Emergency Medicine for Ontario Health Toronto and past co-Chair of the Return Visit Quality Program of Ontario Health Quality. He is also an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. With training at McGill (MD CM), University of Toronto (FRCPC), Harvard (MPH) and the Rotman School of Management (MBA), his work primarily focuses ensuring that the operational and clinical aspects of healthcare align to enable providers to deliver value for patients. 

Olivia Ostrow 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. Since 2020, Dr. Ostrow has been the Associate Director at the Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS) at the University of Toronto. She is also the Pediatrics lead for Choosing Wisely Canada and co-chairs the provincial Emergency Department Return Visit Quality Program with Ontario Health. Dr. Ostrow is passionate about healthcare quality and safety and is actively involved in front-line improvement work.  

Date and time

Tuesday, May 16, 2023, 12-1 p.m. ET

Summary Description

CAMH has been a pioneering hospital in collecting health equity data in Ontario. In the past few years, race breakdown of key performance metrics has added an equity lens to various levels of decision making processes and quality improvement initiatives of the hospital. In this talk, Farhat Farrokhi will describe how the health equity data is collected, analyzed, and presented at CAMH, Dr Treena Wilkie will speak about the Forensic Program’s EDI strategy and the use of health equity data, and finally Amanda McIntosh discusses more detailed examples of leveraging data by the Forensics frontline staff.

Speaker bios

Farhat Farrokhi is the Interim Director of Performance & Analytics at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), where he is responsible for overseeing the development and execution of the organization’s strategic analytic activities to support the delivery of data-driven care. Farhat has gained his extensive knowledge of analytics in health system performance and clinical research through his several years of experience as a medical researcher, executive editor of peer-reviewed medical journals, and analytic and leadership positions at the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) and CAMH. Farhat is an internationally trained physician and holds a Master’s of Science in Clinical Epidemiology from University of Toronto.

Amanda McIntosh RN, BScN is a Team Leader on a Forensic General Rehabilitation Unit. She has been working as a Registered Nurse in the Forensic Mental Health program at CAMH since 2008. She is focused on and passionate about creating and maintaining an equitable environment for client care. She is a member of Nursing Practice Advisory Council Fair & Just Working Group.  As team lead she has collaborated on many initiatives to underscore the need to address inequalities within the system on a unit based level, such as contributing to bi-weekly Anti-Black Racism meetings, and co-facilitating Culturally Adaptive- CBT group.

Dr. Treena Wilkie is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto and the Deputy Physician-in-Chief, Medical Affairs and Practice at CAMH. She has been qualified as a specialist in forensic psychiatry by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and is the Chief of the forensic division in the Complex Care and Recovery Program at CAMH. Dr. Wilkie is a clinician and educator of psychiatry residents. Her clinical and scholarship interests include the alignment of risk assessment and management principles with recovery-based care and physician wellness and professionalism initiatives.