Core Faculty

Genevieve Bouchard-Fortier

Genevieve Bouchard-Fortier, MD, MSc
Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology

Dr. Genevieve Bouchard-Fortier is a gynecologic oncologist at University Health Network. She obtained her MD at McGill University. She completed a residency program and fellowship in Gynecologic Oncology in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Genevieve Bouchard-Fortier is a gynecologic oncologist at University Health Network. She obtained her MD at McGill University. She completed a residency program and fellowship in Gynecologic Oncology in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Toronto. During this time, Dr. Bouchard-Fortier also obtained a Master of clinical epidemiology focusing on cancer screening and cancer prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health. More recently, she did a certificate in Patient safety and Quality improvement with the Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQUIPS) and is currently doing the CQUIPS Improvement Fellowship. Dr. Bouchard-Fortier research and clinical interests include management of gestational trophoblastic disease as well as development of quality metrics and quality initiatives to improve gynecologic oncology care.

Tara Burra

Tara Burra, MD
Department of Psychiatry

Dr. Tara Burra 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.

Dr. Tara Burra 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, she 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. Her clinical work is in general adult psychiatry and perinatal psychiatry.

Bourne Auguste

Bourne Auguste, MD, MSc
Department of Medicine

Dr. Bourne Auguste is staff nephrologist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and an Assistant Professor in Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto with a job description of Clinician in Quality and Innovation. He received his MD from McMaster University and completed his residency training in internal medicine and nephrology at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Bourne Auguste is staff nephrologist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and an Assistant Professor in Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto with a job description of Clinician in Quality and Innovation. He received his MD from McMaster University and completed his residency training in internal medicine and nephrology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Auguste also completed a home dialysis fellowship at the Toronto General Hospital.

He is a 2015-2016 graduate of the C-QuIPS Certificate in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement course and also completed his MSc in System Leadership and Innovation at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto in 2019.

His main focus in quality improvement and recent publications have centered on optimizing outcomes for home dialysis patients through innovative practices. Dr. Auguste is also examining ways in which current equity gaps and variations in educational experiences for patients can be reduced prior to starting home dialysis. He also sits on the Canadian Nephrology Quality Improvement and Implementation Science Collaborative group in trying to promote various ways to enhance quality improvement education amongst nephrology trainees across Canada.

Shaan Chugh

Shaan Chugh, MD, MSc
Department of Medicine

Dr. Shaan Chugh is a General Internist at Trillium Health Partners and the Medical Director of THP Solutions. He completed his Masters degree at the IHPME in Quality Improvement & Patient Safety. He received his MD from University of Ottawa and completed his Internal Medicine residency at McMaster, followed by his fellowship in General Internal Medicine at the University of Toronto.

Edward Etchells

Edward Etchells, MD, MSc
Department of Medicine

Dr. Edward Etchells is a general internist and Medical Director of Information Services at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and professor of medicine in the Department of Medicine in the University of Toronto. He received his MD from the University of Toronto, where he also completed his specialty training in General Internal Medicine and MSc in Clinical Epidemiology.

  • He established the Patient Safety Service at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, the first hospital-based academic patient safety service in Canada.
  • His original study “Unintended Medication Discrepancies at the Time of Hospital Admission” published in the Archives of Internal Medicine contributed to establishing medication reconciliation globally as a patient safety best practice; its novel methods for identifying and classifying medication errors were adopted by the Canadian Safer Healthcare Now! Campaign and the World Health Organization’s ‘High 5’s’ medication reconciliation initiative.
  • He was a co-investigator on the Canadian Adverse Events Study, and was responsible for leading¬ the training for reviewers.
  • He established the University of Toronto Certificate Program in Quality and Patient Safety in 2008; this program has trained nearly 200 front-line clinicians and senior trainees and was awarded the Colin Woolf Award for Excellence in Course Coordination from the University of Toronto’s Office of Continuing Education and Professional Development.
Joanne Goldman

Joanne Goldman, PhD
Department of Medicine

Dr. Joanne Goldman is a C-QuIPS Scientist, Cross-Appointed Researcher at The Wilson Centre, and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine, University of Toronto. Her primary research interest is using sociologically informed theoretical and methodological perspectives to study quality improvement and patient safety education and practice. In 2015, Joanne obtained her PhD from the Institute of Medical Science, University of Toronto.

She received a CIHR Doctoral Research Award for her study titled “An ethnography of interprofessional interactions in discharge in a Canadian acute care setting”. Upon graduation, Joanne undertook a postdoctoral position with scientists from C-QuIPS, The Wilson Centre, and St. Michael’s Hospital. This postdoctoral study, titled “A case study of advanced post-licensure quality improvement and patient safety education” was funded by The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Joanne was a Research Fellow at The Wilson Centre during her doctoral and postdoctoral training.

Prior to working at C-QuIPS, Joanne worked for over 15 years in health care education and services research at Continuing Professional Development, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. During this time, she was engaged in research in the fields of continuing education, interprofessional education and practice, and knowledge translation. Her work included a study examining barriers and facilitators to the integration of continuing education, quality improvement, patient safety and knowledge translation initiatives and an ethnographic study on teamwork in intensive care units. She has also participated in Cochrane and scoping reviews in the areas of interprofessional education and practice. Joanne began working with the Journal of Interprofessional Care in 2007 as a short reports editor, was the Managing Editor for four years, and has been an Associate Editor since 2014.

S. Joseph Kim

S. Joseph Kim, MD, PhD, MHS, MBA, FRCPC
Department of Medicine

Dr. Joseph Kim is a staff nephrologist in the Division of Nephrology and Director of the Kidney Transplant Program at the Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Joseph Kim is a staff nephrologist in the Division of Nephrology and Director of the Kidney Transplant Program at the Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto. He is the Vice Chair of the Medical Advisory Committee at the University Health Network, Chair of the Data System Working Group for the Organ Donation and Transplantation Collaborative at Health Canada, Chair of the Global Data Harmonization Committee for the Transplantation Society, Past-President of the Board of Directors for the Canadian Society of Transplantation, Past-President of the Canadian Organ Replacement Register Board of Directors, and former Vice-Chair of the Data Advisory Committee for the U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. Dr. Kim completed medical school, internal medicine residency, chief medical residency, and fellowships in nephrology and kidney transplantation at the University of Toronto. In 2008, he earned a PhD in epidemiology and a Master of Health Science in biostatistics at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2020, he completed a Global Executive MBA for Healthcare and the Life Sciences at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Dr. Kim’s research interests include access to and outcomes of kidney transplantation using centreand population-based cohorts as well as using data more effectively to inform health system improvement. His methodological interest focuses on improving causal inferences from observational data.

Amanda Mayo

Amanda Mayo, MD, MHSc
Department of Medicine

Dr. 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.

Amanda 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.

She received her MD and completed specialty training in Physiatry at the University of Toronto. She has a MHSc in Clinical Engineering from the University of Toronto with a focus on process mapping and human factors engineering.

Eric Monteiro

Eric Monteiro, MD, MSc
Department of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery

Dr. Eric Monteiro is an assistant professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at the University of Toronto, with his practice based primarily out of Sinai Health System and the University Healthy Network. Dr. Monteiro received his MD and residency training from the University of Toronto. He went on to complete 2 years of advanced fellowship training in minimally invasive skull base surgery, head and neck surgical oncology and rhinology. He also completed an MSc in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety at the Institute of Healthy Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

  • His primary focus in quality improvement and patient safety is the development and evaluation of quality indicators for various conditions in the field of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck surgery. Recent projects include developing quality indicators for the surgical management of well-differentiated thyroid cancer as well as for the management of acute and chronic rhinosinusitis.
  • He is involved in the Choosing Wisely campaign for the Canadian Society of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery and is currently involved in creating the lists for the subspecialties of Rhinology and Head & Neck Surgery.
  • He is currently leading the development of a patient friendly website aimed at improving the perioperative experience of patients undergoing various Otolaryngological procedures
  • He was a member of the working group in Cancer Care Ontario which developed the Quality Based Procedure (QBP) protocol for thyroid surgery.
Olivia Ostrow

Olivia Ostrow, MD
Department of Paediatrics

Dr. Olivia Ostrow is an academic clinician and the patient safety lead for the Division of Paediatric Emergency Medicine at the Hospital for Sick Children, and an assistant professor in the Department of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto. She received her MD at West Virginia University School of Medicine and completed a combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics training at the University of California San Diego and the University of Rochester. She is board certified in both specialties and holds a certificate in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety from the University of Toronto.

  • She is an experienced quality improvement champion who is committed to frontline improvement work. Locally, she plays a key leadership role in the Hospital for Sick Children’s Choosing Wisely campaign. At the provincial level, she is actively involved in the P4R Emergency Department Return Visit Quality Initiative with Health Quality Ontario.
  • She chairs the Paediatric Emergency Medicine Morbidity and Mortality committee and also involved in the SickKids Caring Safely Initiative and serves as a regular instructor for the Error Prevention course taught throughout the hospital.
  • She is the current interim co-director of the C-QuIPS Certificate Course in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement and faculty for the Co-Learning Curriculum in Quality Improvement in the Department of Paediatrics.
Marie Pinard

Marie Pinard, BScN, MSc
Women’s College Hospital

Marie Pinard is the Director of Quality, Safety and Patient Experience at Women’s College Hospital. Previously she was the manager of the Quality Management Department at The Hospital for Sick Children, where she had also worked for over 25 year in a variety of roles including as a front-line nurse in Haematology/Oncology, a specialist in Infection Prevention & Control and Manager of 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.

  • For the past 15 years Marie has been firmly grounded in Quality Management. She is passionate about quality improvement (QI), QI methodology and QI ethics – she spearheaded the development of a robust process for ethical oversight of QI projects at SickKids and has reviewed over 1000 proposals over the past 10 years.
  • Her other professional interests include quality monitoring processes, indicator development, patient safety and the science of improvement.
  • 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).
  • She has an appointment at the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto where she is a course instructor in their Masters in Health Administration program.
Leahora Rotteau

Leahora Rotteau, MA, PhD(c)
Program Manager, C-QUIPS

Ms. Rotteau oversees the general operations of the Centre, coordinates initiatives and provides project support for Centre-based research programs. She brings expertise in project management and qualitative healthcare research to the team.

Ms. Rotteau received her MA from the University of Waterloo’s Faculty of Applied Health Sciences and worked in the Veteran’s Centre at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre before joining Dr. Shojania’s research team as project manager for a national study of implementation issues for patient safety practices in paediatric and adult hospitals. She joined the Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety in December 2009. She is currently working to complete her PhD in Health Services Research at the Institute for Healthcare Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto with an interest in using qualitative methods to understand the context of quality improvement implementation.

Kaveh Shojania

Kaveh Shojania, MD
Department of Medicine and Senior Scholar, C-QUIPS

Dr. Kaveh Shojania is a general internist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and professor of medicine and Vice-Chair, Quality & Innovation at the Department of Medicine. He received his MD from the University of Manitoba and completed his residency in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard University, and a Hospitalist fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco.

  • He is currently the editor-in-chief of BMJ Quality & Safety, the leading scientific publication in the fields of patient safety and healthcare quality improvement.
  • He is a core faculty member in the MSc in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety program at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Health Policy Management and Evaluation.
  • He has published over 130 articles indexed in Medline, including in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, and Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Google Scholar identifies over 10,000 citations to his work, with 25 of his publications cited over 100 times each. (His h-index is 49).
  • In 2004, he received one of the John M. Eisenberg Patient Safety Awards from the US Joint Commission for the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the National Quality Forum for work in patient safety that has had an impact at a national level.
  • In 2015, the US National Patient Safety Foundation invited Dr. Shojania to co-chair with Dr. Don Berwick, co-founder of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, an international expert panel reviewing progress in patient safety since the Institute of Medicine Report “To Err is Human” in 2000. This work produced a white paper, Free from Harm: Accelerating Patient Safety Improvement Fifteen Years after To Err Is Human and a viewpoint entitled “Patient Safety at the Crossroads” published in JAMA.
Christine Soong

Christine Soong, MD, MSc
Department of Medicine

Dr. Christine Soong is an academic hospitalist and Program Director for the Hospital Medicine Program at Mount Sinai Hospital / University Health Network, and an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr. Soong received her MD from the University of Western Ontario and completed her residency training in family medicine and a MSc in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

  • She has held leadership positions as both an academic and community-based hospitalist at William Osler Health Centre, Sinai Health System, and Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Centre.
  • She chaired Choosing Wisely committees for both the Canadian Society of Internal Medicine and the Canadian Society of Hospital Medicine, and led the development of Choosing Wisely Canada lists for both societies.
  • She has led numerous quality improvement initiatives focused on improving care transitions and hospital discharge, the quality of care for orthopedic hip fracture patients, resource stewardship, and more recently, reducing the inappropriate use of psychotropic medications in frail elderly hospitalized patients.
  • She has successfully disseminated the findings of her quality improvement initiatives in BMJ Quality & Safety, CMAJ, and the Journal of Hospital Medicine.
Brian Wong

Brian Wong, MD
Department of Medicine and Director, C-QUIPS

Dr. Brian Wong is a general internist at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and associate professor and Director, Continuing Education and Quality Improvement in the Department of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He received his MD from the University of Toronto, where he also completed his specialty training in Internal Medicine. After completing his clinical training, he undertook a 2-year patient safety research fellowship funded by the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation. As part of this fellowship, he became certified as an Improvement Advisor through the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) Improvement Advisor Program.

  • He chaired the CanMEDS 2015 Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Expert Working Group and authored a report that informed the eventual integration of patient safety and quality improvement competencies into the CanMEDS 2015 physician competency framework
  • He is a Clinician Educator with the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada; in this role, he directs the ASPIRE train-the-trainer faculty development program, and spearheaded efforts to establish Patient Safety and Quality Improvement as an official Diploma Discipline in Canada.
  • He was invited to join the Association for American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Teaching for Quality (Te4Q) expert panel as the only Canadian representative, and co-authored the “Teaching for Quality: Integrating Quality Improvement and Patient Safety across the Continuum of Medical Education” report.
  • He led the development of an innovative Faculty-Resident Co-Learning Curriculum in Quality Improvement in the Department of Medicine; over the past 6 years, the program has trained over 100 faculty and nearly 500 residents in 35 residencies across the Departments of Medicine, Paediatrics, Surgery and Ophthalmology and Vision Sciences at the University of Toronto. The curriculum received the Helen P. Batty Award for Excellence and Achievement in Faculty Development in 2016.
  • In recognition of his contributions to advancing education on patient safety and quality improvement, he was awarded the New Investigator Award from the Canadian Society of Internal Medicine, and the Young Educators Award from the Association of Faculties of Medicine in Canada.

Adina Weinerman, MD MHSc
Department of Medicine

Adina is a staff physician in General Internal Medicine and Medical Director of Quality and Patient Safety at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto. In 2015, she completed her masters in Health Administration from the Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. Her area of research focuses on resource stewardship. She is the chair of the Canadian Society of Internal Medicine Choosing Wisely Committee and the physician lead of the Choosing Wisely at Sunnybrook Project Team. She works to implement and evaluate data-based resource stewardship recommendations to improve quality of care. In addition, she is working on educating trainees about resource stewardship, as it relates to communicating with patients and their families who request medically unnecessary tests or treatments. She is a graduate of EQUIP 2017-2018.