Faculty members launch Gynaecology Quality Improvement Collaboration website to improve knowledge translation
Drs. Lindsay Shirreff, Jodi Shapiro and Ally Murji develop virtual tools for surgeons and patients
Drs. Ally Murji, Jodi Shapiro and Lindsay Shirreff
By
Kyla Rudyk-de Leth
Dr. Lindsay Shirreff and Dr. Ally Murji, obstetrician gynaecologists at Sinai Health System have been working with Dr. Jodi Shapiro, SHS Ob-Gyn QuIPS Lead, on quality improvement and knowledge translation initiatives in gynaecology. As an extension of the Surgical Gynaecology Scorecard project, the trio has launched the Gynaecology Quality Improvement Collaboration website. Through this project, they have learned that patients with endometriosis have a very different perioperative surgical risk profile compared to those without endometriosis.
In 2017, Shirreff and Murji created the Surgical Gynaecology Scorecard for hysterectomy procedures with leadership from Drs. Jodi Shapiro, Mathew Sermer and John Kingdom. They began this initiative at a single hospital and expanded to include ten hospitals across four Canadian universities, and have catalogued over 5000 hysterectomy procedures.
As part of the launch of the new website, they introduced the Hysterectomy Complication Prediction Tool. Based on over 3000 hysterectomy cases, the form allows surgeons to enter specific data in order to obtain patients’ personalized risk of significant complication at elective hysterectomy.
Through this collaboration, staff gynaecologists have partnered with Ob-Gyn residents and University of Toronto medical students to create the Patient Handout Project, a collection of over 40 patient handouts providing reliable, evidence-based information related to gynaecologic care.
“It is important for patients to understand their personalized risk of surgical complications prior to undergoing hysterectomy,” said Shirreff and Murji. “Our aim is to empower patients with knowledge from a trusted source, and we hope this will help alleviate some anxiety and equip patients to ask the right questions of their healthcare providers.”
As clinical appointments may not provide enough time for patients to have all their questions answered, the website acts as a resource to improve the delivery of information and encourage patients to learn about their own gynaecologic health and conditions.
Shirreff, Murji and Shapiro believed in the importance of creating uniform, clinically meaningful feedback for gynaecologic surgeons in Canada. The website aims to bring useful resources from the collaboration to gynaecologists and their patients to improve care and foster a culture of feedback for practicing physicians.
