Patricia Trbovich

Faculty Member

Accepting Students

Initiative

Evaluating the implementation of Pyxis IV Prep

The NYGH oncology pharmacy team implemented a new compounding workflow technology to verify measured doses of chemotherapy, leading to improved efficiencies and better assurances of accuracy and safety.

Lead: Patricia Trbovich

Initiative

Improving Surgical Safety with the Operating Room Black Box

Accepting Students

NYGH has implemented the Operating Room Black Box (ORBB), which creates an audio/video record of surgical procedures over time to rigorously study how errors come about, and how they can be prevented.

Lead: Patricia Trbovich

Initiative

Developing a Pan-Canadian Risk-Assessment Tool to Proactively Assess Hospital Safeguards for Controlled Substances

A Pan-Canadian risk assessment tool is being developed for hospitals to identify, safeguard, and estimate the cost of drug diversion in hospitals.

Lead: Patricia Trbovich

Patricia Trbovich is Associate Professor in the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation and cross appointed at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. She holds the Badeau Family Research Chair in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement at North York General Hospital. She is the Research and Scholarship lead, Centre for Quality Improvement & Patient Safety (C-QuIPS).

Prof. Trbovich leads HumanEra, a team of human factors researchers dedicated to studying and improving safety and performance in health care. Her current research includes two Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) funded projects; one focused on improving opioid guidance for Canadian hospitals and a second focused on improving surgical safety by reducing safety threats and enhancing resilience supports. She also holds a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) grant focused on operator decision making during uncertainty in surgery, using the Operating Room Black Box.

She has promoted knowledge of human factors engineering worldwide through her collaborations with researchers in Brazil and Spain to develop human factors expertise in their healthcare systems. She is also Associate Editor for the BMJ Quality and Safety journal.

Accepting Students

Diagnostic errors are a global population health challenge, impacting one in every twenty patients annually and nearly ever person accessing the health system within their lifetime. The Patient-Partnered Diagnostic Center of Excellence is a four-year program of research funded by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality and is led by investigators from the University of Toronto, MedStar Health (Maryland & District of Columbia), Baylor College of Medicine (Texas), and the Mothers Against Medical Error. Dr. Kelly Smith leads the Toronto node of the Center.