Dr. Christine Soong

Our research focuses the quality of care across three main areas:

Resource Stewardship

As much as 30% of healthcare use is unnecessary and can sometimes lead to harm. Resource stewardship aims to reduce unnecessary care, thereby improving quality, safety and patient experience. We design, implement, and evaluate quality improvement initiatives across hospitals in Toronto to reduce unnecessary testing and treatments. This work has led to international recognition and meaningful improvements in care, including reduced unnecessary lab testing and decreased use of harmful sedative use among hospitalized inpatients. We have published more than 60 peer reviewed publications and presented our findings nationally and internationally.

Academic Quality Improvement (QI)

We also work to strengthen how quality improvement is studied. By developing and sharing advanced methods to evaluate QI initiatives, we aim to increase scientific rigour and ensure that improvement efforts are evidence-based and impactful.

Improving Hospital Care

We lead multi-hospital improvement initiatives to improve care in key areas, including reducing sedative use, improving transitions of care, improving hip fracture care, and implementing medical safety huddles. The safety huddles are brief interdisciplinary meetings among medical staff at the start of each shift, which improve patient outcomes and build strong team culture. We achieve improvements through collaboration with inter-professional colleagues. For example, our work on improving hip fracture care was recognized with a “Leading Practice Designation” from Accreditation Canada.