Council Award
Alliston FP receives Council Award
Dr. Shazia Ambreen
photo: claudia hung
Dr. Shazia Ambreen, a family physician and GP Anesthetist at the Stevenson Memorial Hospital in Alliston, Ontario, received a Council Award in recognition for her dedication to quality improvement. Dr. Ambreen has many roles at Stevenson Memorial: she is an anesthetist, a hospitalist, the Chief of Family Medicine, and the President of the Professional Staff Association. When she joined the hospital’ s medical staff in 2012, she almost immediately distinguished herself as a strong advocate for patient safety, continuous improvement and excellent medical care. Dr. Ambreen’ s story began in Pakistan where she grew up as part of a large, close-knit family. A childhood fascination with medicine led to her earning a medical degree at the University of Karachi in 1998, followed by a residency in Family Medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York( 2006) and a fellowship in GP Anesthesia at the University of Toronto( 2011). Early in her career, Dr. Ambreen practised in different urban and rural settings from Brampton to Wiarton to Sioux Lookout and many other parts of Northwestern Ontario. While she enjoyed every experience, she found herself drawn to the life of a rural community physician where she could practise a wider range of medicine and work on cases that would likely be referred to a specialist if she were working in a larger, urban centre. At Stevenson, she has won the praise and admiration of her colleagues for being a physician who goes above and beyond her commitment to patient care and demonstrates continuous leadership and excellence. Under her leadership, the family medicine department has developed a number of quality improvement initiatives including better transition of care for patients from acute care to the community, better patient experience, and medication reconciliation on discharge. She is also credited with introducing numerous hospital-wide quality improvement tools and procedures and participating in efforts to improve policies and procedures, including:
• Creating a pre-operative screening tool to reduce anesthesia-related risk, resulting in enhanced patient care and safety. This tool is currently being used by the hospital and community physicians to identify high risk patients;
• Leading a group of hospitalists, surgeons and emergency department physicians in the development of a standardized process for care of patients with gastrointestinal bleeding;
• Actively participating in the implementation of pro-
Issue 1, 2017 Dialogue 19