In September, Choosing Wisely Canada and the Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS) welcomed a new group of fellows to the Healthcare Improvement Fellowship. This marks the program’s second year offering a dedicated stream on Choosing Wisely Canada, comprising of four fellows with strong academic interests in resource stewardship.

The one-year program offers fellows the valuable opportunity to receive mentorship from experts and engage in a comprehensive curriculum covering quality improvement and de-implementation research methodologies. Throughout the program, fellows develop and refine their projects with the goal of sharing findings through publications and presentations.

Meet the 2023-2024 Choosing Wisely Canada Fellows

• Marko Balan is an intensivist and internist practicing in St John’s, NL. His clinical and health care quality interests include reducing low-value care within intensive care units, and medical education and quality assurance in point-of-care ultrasound. Dr. Balan’s fellowship project focuses on reducing routine use of chest X-rays in postoperative surgeries.
• Thomas Bodley is an internal medicine and critical care physician at the Scarborough Health Network (SHN) in Scarborough, Ontario. Dr. Bodley’s fellowship project focuses on building capacity for health care sustainability initiatives in critical care across Canada.
• Mathilde Gaudreau Simard is a general internist at the Ottawa Hospital. Dr. Simard’s quality improvement work revolves around two themes – point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) and planetary health. Her fellowship project focuses on reducing the use of CT/x-ray in ICUs by using point-of-care ultrasound.
• Joey Cheng-Singleton is the MRI Team Lead at the Hospital for Sick Children. Ms. Cheng-Singleton interests focus on the impact of equity, diversity and inclusivity on the overuse of low-value care. Her fellowship project focuses on reducing low-value care or redundant imaging tests in pediatrics to improve wait times and quality of care.

Dr. Andrea Patey, Co-Director of the Healthcare Improvement Fellowship, shares excitement about the diverse projects proposed by the fellows. “In our second year of this fellowship, witnessing the evolution of these unique ideas through mentorship and the program’s curriculum is truly inspiring,” she says. “It continues to foster leadership in advancing knowledge and practices to reduce low-value care in Canada. The hope is that fellows will continue to carry the Choosing Wisely Canada torch as they ‘graduate’ from the program.”

Are you interested in becoming a Choosing Wisely Canada fellow? Visit CQuIPs’ website for more information on the next round of applications.