Canada - University of Toronto, Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety

The Centre for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (C-QuIPS) is a joint partnership between the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine and two of its major teaching hospitals, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and the Hospital for Sick Children. C-QuIPS provides leadership in quality improvement and patient safety education complemented by research programs and collaborative networks within the Toronto Academic Health Science Network (TAHSN) and the broader healthcare system. Recognizing that the science of patient safety and quality improvement involves not just traditional biomedical sciences and health services research but also other disciplines, including human factors engineering, cognitive psychology, complexity science and information technology, the educational and research activities of the Centre draws on individuals and institutions in diverse disciplines and professions.

C-QuIPS began as the University of Toronto Centre for Patient Safety (in January 2009), reflecting the early focus on patient safety as a particularly galvanizing aspect of healthcare quality. Having a clear focus, especially early on, served a useful purpose. However, many of our activities, especially in education and capacity building related to aspects of healthcare quality broader than patient safety problems. In 2013, with the approval of the Faculty of Medicine and the sponsoring hospitals, we made explicit the Centre’s engagement in quality improvement more broadly by officially changing its name to C-QuIPS.