About
Bonnie received her doctorate in cognitive psychology at the Toronto Metropolitan University. She completed postdoctoral work at St. Michael’s Hospital under the supervision of Dr. Teodor Grantcharov (2020-2022) before joining HumanEra as a postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Dr. Patricia Trbovich at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto in 2022. Bonnie’s research combines her knowledge of cognitive psychology and human factors, as well as a various research methods such as direct observations, simulations, interviews, focus groups, quantitative, and meta/systematic review approaches to understand healthcare systems and how they can be improved. During her first postdoctoral fellowship, Bonnie showed that surgeons’ neural activity, measured using electroencephalography (EEG) while the surgeon operated on patients, could predict technical intraoperative errors 17 seconds before they occurred – demonstrating a proof-of-concept that EEG may be used as an early warning system to caution about imminent technical errors. In her current postdoctoral fellowship, Bonnie’s research projects involve (1) understanding the safety threats and resilience supports in the operating room (OR) using the OR Black Box recording system at North York General Hospital (NYGH), (2) holding workshops for surgical teams at NYGH to redesign the surgical safety checklist to better meet the needs of healthcare professionals, and (3) running in-situ simulations in the OR to determine the safety threats and resilience supports that surface during anesthesia-related crisis management events such as local anesthetic systemic toxicity and failed intubation. Her overarching aim is to design and implement interventions that meet the needs of healthcare providers. Bonnie also serves on the editorial board of the journal Medical Decision Making and is a reviewer for multiple journals including the British Medical Journal, Medical Decision Making Policies and Practice, Scientific Reports, BioMed Central, Journal of Cognitive Psychology and the International Journal of Psychology.
