Our faculty advisors are leaders in a variety of health care fields. We rely on their guidance to organize educational and practical experience opportunities for our members.
If you would like to join or nominate someone for the Faculty Advisory Committee, please contact president@utihiopenschool.ca
Past Faculty Advisory Committee: 2011-2012 | 2010-2011 | 2009-2010
Current Faculty Advisory Committee: 2012 – 2013
Dr. Ross Baker, PhD
Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation
Dr. Ross Baker is a professor in the Institute of Health Policy, Management & Evaluation at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Baker was principal investigator for the project “Adverse Events in Canadian Hospitals” and together with Dr. Peter Norton and a team of investigators across Canada published the results of the study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2004. Dr. Baker and Dr. Norton were awarded the Health Services Research Advancement Award from the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation for their patient safety research in May 2009.
In October 2008, Dr. Baker published a book, High Performing Healthcare Systems that analyzes seven health care systems that have been successful in using improvement tools and knowledge to transform outcomes. Other recent projects include the study of effective governance practices in improving quality and patient safety and an assessment of the legislative, legal and policy barriers to enhanced adverse event reporting and learning in Canada.
Dr. Baker co-chaired a working group on methods and measures for patient safety for the World Health Organization from 2005-2010 and chaired the Advisory Committee on Research and Evaluation for the Canadian Patient Safety Institute. Dr. Baker is a member of the Board of the Health Quality Council of Saskatchewan, and the Advisory Board for the GE Patient Safety Organization (PSO) in the US.
Paula Blackstien-Hirsch, MHSc, MSc, BSC (PT)
Rehabilitation Sciences
Paula Blackstien-Hirsch, MHSc, MSc, CHE, delivers consulting and implementation support to achieve sustainable organizational improvements in quality and safety. Starting her career as a physical therapist, Paula has developed expertise in measurement, performance management, and quality improvement with a special interest in the role of boards and senior executives in leading quality and safety as a core business strategy. Paula is passionate about the need for strong, visible organizational leadership of the quality and safety agenda to succeed in realizing high performance. With over 30 years of experience in healthcare, Paula has led system level improvement initiatives provincially and nationally in the hospital and community-based sectors, in the capacities of Senior Director with the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, Executive Director for the Centre for Healthcare Quality Improvement, Director for the Hospital Report Research Collaborative, Senior Consultant with Agnew Peckham and Associates, and Manager of applied research projects at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. Paula is on the core faculty for a new Masters in Quality and Patient Safety at the University of Toronto and is faculty, Safety and Quality, with the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement. Paula is a member of two Boards, one of these being Bridgepoint Health where she also Chairs their Board Quality and Safety Committee.
In her leadership role at the Centre for Healthcare Quality Improvement (CHQI), Paula designed and led several breakthrough series quality improvement collaboratives, such as the Flo Collaborative, Releasing Time to Care, and the Integrated Client Care Program (Wound Care) that utilized multiple improvement strategies including Lean methods and the Model for Improvement. These initiatives engaged multiple hospital and community-based organizations from across Ontario in improving patient care delivery processes and outcomes across healthcare sectors. More recently, she has facilitated a number of workshops using Lean methods, working with mental health and addictions teams, provided training workshops on Governance for Quality and Safety for organizations spanning multiple healthcare sectors, conducted training workshops on quality improvement for front-line staff in the community sector, and has completed assignments focused on aligning organizational metrics and accountability mechanisms, based on principles of leadership and staff engagement.
Paula has a Masters Degree in Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, a Masters Degree in Clinical Epidemiology, and an Undergraduate Degree in Physiotherapy. She has also completed the Improvement Advisor Professional Development Program and the Executive Quality Academy, both delivered by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Experience-based Design and Releasing Time to Care from the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, the Patient Safety Education Program and Effective Governance for Quality and Patient Safety from the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, as well as courses in Lean Methodology for Healthcare, Corporate Coaching and Group Facilitation.
Dr. Michael Carter, PhD, MMath, BMath
Engineering
Michael Carter is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto and Director of the Centre for Research in Healthcare Engineering. He received his doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Waterloo in 1980. Since 1989, his research focus has been in the area of health care resource modeling with a variety of projects in hospitals, home care, rehab, long term care, medical labs and mental health institutions. He has supervised more than 160 engineering students in over 100 projects with healthcare institutions. He currently has 14 graduate students (7 doctoral and 7 masters) working in the area. He was the winner of the Annual Practice Prize from the Canadian Operational Research Society (CORS) four times (1988, 1992, 1996 and 2009). In 2000, he received the CORS Award of Merit for lifetime contributions to Canadian Operational Research. He also received an “Excellence in Teaching” Award from the University of Toronto Student Administrative Council. He is on the editorial board for the “Journal of Scheduling”, the journal “Health Care Management Science”, “Operations Research for Healthcare” and “Health Systems”. Professor Carter is co-editor of an issue of Interfaces and an issue of OR Spectrum on Healthcare Applications. He is a member of the “Nursing Effectiveness, Utilization and Outcomes Research Unit” and a mentor in the “Health Care, Technology and Place” Program at the University of Toronto. He is on the Advisory Board for the Regenstreif Centre for Healthcare Engineering at Purdue University. He is an Adjunct Scientist with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto (www.ices.on.ca) and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.
Olavo Fernandes, RPH, BscPharm, CPR, PharmD, FCSHP
Pharmacy
Olavo Fernandes is a Pharmacy Clinical Site Leader at Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network, Assistant Professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto.
Olavo’s main practice and teaching site if General Internal Medicine where he provides clinical rotations for PharmD students, pharmacy residents & interns. He is also the co-coordinator of the UHN Hospital Pharmacy Residency Program. He is an active member of the National Faculty of Safer Health Care Now! (medication reconciliation) and is affiliated with the Institute for Safe Medication Practice (ISMP) Canada. Olavo is actively involved in patient and medication safety research projects/ publications aimed at designing/ implementing multidisciplinary practice models/tools for medication reconciliation and information transfer.
Olavo completed a BScPhm, Residency in Hospital Pharmacy and PharmD. at the University of Toronto. As a Clinical Site Leader, Olavo coordinates and contributes toward patient care, teaching, research, clinical administration and mentorship. In addition, he is active within various pharmacy organizations including the Canadian Society of Hospital Pharmacists.
Dr. Chris Hayes, PhD, MSc, MEd, FRCPC
Medicine
Dr. Chris Hayes leads several quality improvement and patient safety initiatives, including rapid response teams, central line programs, and ventilator bundle programs. He has participated as a faculty member in the Canadian Patient Safety Officer Course and as a task force member in the CPSI/Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Safety Competencies Project.
Dr. Hayes’s research interests lie in best practice implementation, organizational safety culture, and adverse event disclosure. He has received funding from CPSI, PSI, and the Canadian Intensive Care Foundation.
Dr. Hayes completed his medical school training and residency in internal medicine and critical care at the University of Toronto. He is a staff critical care physician, site lead for the Critical Care Response Team, and medical director of Quality and Patient Safety at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
Dr. Hayes completed his master of education degree and a research fellowship with the Wilson Centre for Research in Education. He is a graduate of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Patient Safety Officer Executive Training Program.
Dr. Anne Matlow, MD, MSc FRCPC
Medicine
Dr. Matlow is currently the Vice President, Education at Women’s College Hospital. Formerly she was the Medical Director of Infection Prevention and Control and Medical Director of Patient Safety at Sick Kids in Toronto. She is a Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, and Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto, and was formerly the Associate Director of the University’s Centre for Patient Safety. Anne is involved in patient safety and infection control activities, locally, nationally and internationally. She led the team that just completed the Canadian Paediatric Adverse Events Study, the first national study ever to describe the epidemiology of adverse events in hospitalized children. Anne is co-founder and Chair of the Pediatric International Patient Safety and Quality Committee (PIPSQC), and uses every opportunity to call on her passion in pediatric patient safety in order to improve the quality and safety of children in the healthcare delivery system.
Dr. Michael Rachlis, MD, MSc FRCPC, LLD (Honoris Causa)
Medicine; Public Health
Dr. Michael Rachlis was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1951 and graduated from the University of Manitoba medical school in 1975. He interned at McMaster University and then practiced family medicine at the South Riverdale Community Health Centre in Toronto for eight years. He completed specialty training in Public Health at McMaster and was made a fellow of the Canadian Royal College of Physicians in 1988.Dr. Rachlis practices as a private consultant in health policy analysis. He has consulted to the federal government, all ten provincial governments, and two royal commissions. He is also an associate professor (status only) with the University of Toronto Dalla Lana School of Public Health. In 2010, the University of Manitoba conferred upon Dr. Rachlis an honorary doctor of laws in recognition of his service to Canadian health policy.Dr. Rachlis is based in Toronto but consults and lectures widely on health policy issues. He has been invited to make presentations to committees of the Canadian House of Commons and the Canadian Senate as well as the United States House of Representatives and Senate. He is a frequent media commentator on health policy issues and the author of three national bestselling books about Canada’s health care system. In his spare time, Dr. Rachlis enjoys cycling and duplicate bridge.
Marie Rocchi, MDE, BScPhm
Pharmacy
Creating conditions for learning is one way to describe instructional design; doing so requires knowledge of how we know, how we learn, and a deep contextual understanding of one’s subject area. The intersection with technology-enabled education in pharmacy and other health professions is my current area of practice and research. Combining the instrumental use of technology with the benefits of classroom based, or experiential, or service learning environments is a major focus of my work. In large class sizes such as those we have in pharmacy, technology can help breach the “transactional distance” that occurs, and create “presence”, an important motivating factor for most learners, and one that plays a substantive role in optimizing learning, and can enhance socialization within a profession.
Another emerging area in technology enabled education is that of interprofessional education; the exigencies of scheduling often prevent face-to-face learning experiences for undergraduates in programs across campus, and computer-mediated communication can bridge time and space. Newer applications (wikis, collaborative meeting space) suit the collaborative nature of this type of learning, although access by the user is of paramount importance. In a digital age, computer literacy is fast becoming the norm, but assumptions about whether this results in better learning is an important question.
Dr. Emily Seto, PhD, PEng
Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation
Emily Seto is the Manager of the Personal Health Information Technology team and the Centre Operations. She is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation, University of Toronto. Her research interests include the evaluation and design of healthcare technology to facilitate patient self-care and clinical decision support for chronic disease management. Dr. Seto has over 10 years of experience researching in the field of health informatics at the University Health Network and advising on eHealth provincial initiatives. She is experienced in designing, conducting, and managing research studies using a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, including randomized controlled trials. She has also worked and researched in the areas of healthcare human factors and medical imaging.
She graduated from the Engineering Science (Biomedical Option) Program at the University of Toronto in 1997, and completed a M.Sc. in the Medical Biophyics Department, Physics Stream at the University of Toronto in 2000. She also obtained her doctoral degree in 2011 at the Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.
Her publications from PubMed can be found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Seto%20Emily%20not%20Rajcan-Separovic.
Dr. Kaveh Shojania, MD
Medicine
Dr. Shojania’s research focuses on identifying evidence-based patient safety interventions and effective strategies for translating evidence into practice. His work has appeared in leading journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and The Journal of the American Medical Association(JAMA). He has also delivered presentations on patient safety to the U.S. Institute of Medicine. In 2001, while at the University of California, Dr. Shojania led a team from 10 academic institutions across the U.S. to produce Making Healthcare Safer, a comprehensive report for the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, that synthesizes the evidence supporting more than 75 practices to patient safety. Highlights of the report appeared in JAMA, and more than 140,000 copies of the report have been obtained since its release.
Dr. Shojania’s research includes substantial work in the field of evidence synthesis, such as systematic reviews and meta-analyses. In addition to publishing systematic reviews on a variety of topics, Dr. Shojania developed an electronic strategy for identifying systematic reviews that the U.S. National Library of Medicine adopted as the search filter for reviews built into PubMed. He also conducted a “survival analysis” of 100 clinically important meta-analyses published from 1995 to 2005 to determine how soon quantitative or qualitative changes in the literature indicate the need for updating the previous systematic review. This work, published in Annals of Internal Medicine (with companion methods articles appearing in Journal of Clinical Epidemiology), showed that major changes in evidence that would affect clinical decision-making occurred within two years in 23% of cases, within one year in 15% and prior to publication in 7%.
Kathy Trip, RN, MN
Nursing
Kathy started her career at the University Health Network (UHN) as a research registered nurse with the Bone Marrow Transplant program, which lead led her to develop UHN’s Stem Cell Collection program. During that time, Kathy pursued her undergraduate and graduate studies, leading her to become a nurse practitioner (NP). She has acted as NP in the Transfusion unit and has passionately worked with oncology patients admitted to TGH.
Most recently, Kathy has been instrumental in the development ofREACH (Reducing Emergency and Acute Care Hospitalization), an urgent oncology care clinic at Princess Margaret Hospital. Kathy has been invaluable at REACH, as she acts as an NP, as well as provides clinical leadership and oversees program planning and development of this significant initiative. Kathy has utilized the innovations of several CICC projects at REACH, including Procedure Carts and the use of Rypple(www.rypple.com, a web-based application which allows users to get quick and anonymous feedback), to obtain feedback from clinicians sending patients to the REACH clinic.
Along with Anne Van Deursen, Kathy was co-developer of the General Internal Medicine (GIM) amazing initiative, an exciting annual interprofessional symposium that is aimed at highlighting the important work of GIM and providing a forum for continuing education for GIM specialists.
Recently seconded to the University of Toronto Faculty of Nursing Graduate program, Kathy hopes to introduce the innovative work of the CICC to her colleagues. She will also continue her work at REACH and as a reviewer with the Ontario Cancer Research Ethics Board.
Dr. Daniyal Zuberi, PhD, AM, MSc, BA
Social Work
Dr. Zuberi obtained his doctorate at Harvard University in 2004, in Sociology and Social Policy. He received the Best Dissertation Award, Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) and was a finalist for the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research Best Dissertation Award. Since 2005 Dr. Zuberi has been an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in the Department of Sociology. Dr. Zuberi has published one book Differences that Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and Canada (2006), for which he has won several awards. Dr. Zuberi has been awarded several research grants from the Tri-Council. Dr. Zuberi will on a one year William Lyon Mackenzie Research Fellowship at Harvard University, from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012.
2011 – 2012
Advisor |
Faculty |
Affiliation(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Cathryne Palmer | Radiation Sciences |
|
| Ross Baker | Health Policy |
|
| Paula Blackstein-Hirsch | Rehabilation |
|
| Michael Carter | Engineering |
|
| Joe Caffazo | Engineering |
|
| Sean Clarke | Nursing |
|
| Olavo Fernandes | Pharmacy |
|
| Marie Rocchi | Pharmacy |
|
| Anne Matlow | Medicine |
|
| Dante Morra | Medicine |
|
| Michael Rachlis | Medicine |
|
| Kaveh Shojania | Medicine |
|
2010 – 2011
Advisor |
Faculty |
Affiliation(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Ross Baker | Health Policy |
|
| Paula Blackstein-Hirsch | Rehabilation |
|
| Michael Carter | Engineering |
|
| Joe Caffazo | Engineering |
|
| Sean Clarke | Nursing |
|
| Olavo Fernandes | Pharmacy |
|
| Marie Rocchi | Pharmacy |
|
| Anne Matlow | Medicine |
|
| Dante Morra | Medicine |
|
| Michael Rachlis | Medicine |
|
| Kaveh Shojania | Medicine |
|
2009 – 2010
Advisor |
Faculty |
Affiliation(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Ross Baker | Health Policy |
|
| Paula Blackstein-Hirsch | Rehabilation |
|
| Michael Carter | Engineering |
|
| Marie Rocchi | Pharmacy |
|
| Anne Matlow | Medicine |
|
| Michael Rachlis | Medicine |
|