Lindsay Clarke is the Program Manager of Design and Improvement on the Process Improvement and Innovation team at SickKids. She uses human-centred design, strategic foresight, systems thinking, and design research methods to understand and solve problems at SickKids. Lindsay is responsible for leading organizational projects to solve complex challenges, and is passionate about sharing her love for creative problem solving.

Before SickKids, Lindsay worked as a Registered Nurse in a community hospital and taught English in South Korea. After her time in Korea, she was ready to get back to nursing and work with kids, so naturally, set her sights on SickKids. She began her career at SickKids as a Registered Nurse on the Multi-organ Transplant unit. Since that time, she has worked in a variety of roles in the hospital, including as the Registered Nurses Council Co-Chair and a Quality Team Leader.

Lindsay holds a BSc in Nursing from Ryerson University and a Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation from OCAD University, where her final research explored the futures of public engagement. She loves pizza, her dog and husband, and a newfound relationship with plants.

She has led multiple quality improvement initiatives at her site approaching varied clinical problems such as improving cervical cancer screening, smoking cessation, medication reconciliation, reducing inappropriate prescribing and most recent improving statin prescribing in diabetes. She has collaborated with Markham Stouffville Hospital to improve communication upon hospital discharge. She has also acted as supervisor for numerous resident quality improvement projects. She has been a quality improvement champion at her site in her roles as the lead physician from 2015-2018, Board Chair (2018-2019) and more recent as the Co-Quality Improvement Director since 2020, teaching quality improvement to our family medicine residents. She has had the opportunity to publish in the area of quality improvement in collaboration with other members of the DFCM.

Working in quality improvement brings her joy in work and professional satisfaction enhancing the care she provides to her patients, her teaching, her collaboration with the team and provides her with wonderful opportunities to share and learn with the larger medical community.

Carole Hemmelgarn, MS, MS, is the Program Director for the Executive Master’s program in Clinical Quality, Safety & Leadership at Georgetown University, and the Senior Director of Education at the MedStar Institute for Quality & Safety. Carole received a master’s degree in Patient Safety Leadership from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a second master’s degree in Health Care Ethics from Creighton University. She sits on the Leapfrog Patient & Family Caregiver Expert Panel, Board of Quality, Safety and Experience at Children’s Hospital Colorado, Patient and Family Advisory Committee for the Collaborative for Accountability and Improvement, Board of Children’s Hospital Solutions for Patient Safety, and National Quality Forum Stakeholder Advisory Council. She is a founding member of Patients for Patient Safety US.

Dr. Kelly Smith is the inaugural Michael Garron Chair in Patient-Oriented Research at the Michael Garron Hospital and Associate Professor and Co-Lead for Outcomes & Evaluation in the Institute of Health Policy, Management, & Evaluation at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on coproducing practical solutions to challenges of healthcare delivery with a focus on patient safety and quality improvement. She is a leading investigator in patient-oriented research, forging partnerships with patients to codesign research and innovations to improve the quality and safety of healthcare delivery. She has led several large-scale implementation and evaluation projects for clinics, hospitals, health centers, and health systems across the United States that aim to improve patient safety by engaging patients and their families in care.