We are honoured to announce that our students, Agnes Ryzynski, Andrew Wan, and Raja Ravi have received the prestigious 2019 Practice-Based Research and Innovation (PBRI) Seed Grant. 

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, aligned with its vision of inventing the future of healthcare, awards PBRI Seed Grants through a competitive process to enable health professionals to critically examine and improve their practice. The main objective of these grants is to provide opportunities and funding to allow for an investigation of questions that hold clinical significance to improve the quality of care and patient safety.
After a rigorous selection process, TRP students’ team – Agnes Ryzynski, Andrew Wan, and Raja Ravi, were one of the research teams that were successful in being awarded funding for two years to complete their research on “Improving the Patient Experience at the Pre-Anaesthesia Clinic.”
Their team is exploring innovative questions, the answers to which have the potential to tremendously impact the quality of care and patient experience. Agnes, Andrew, and Raja shared with us details about their project and why their research is important.
~ ~ ~ ~
The Sunnybrook Pre-Anesthesia Clinic (PAC) aims to optimize patients for their surgery by providing them with critical information for their journey in addition to allowing the anesthesiologist to coordinate patient care before and during the day of the procedure.
Through Quality Improvement and Qualitative approaches, we were able to understand patient experiences and opportunities for process improvement. This is important because literature has identified that suboptimal clinic experiences have been linked to increased anxiety and poor recovery following surgery.
Practice-Based Research and Innovation (PBRI) Seed Grant program is a Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre initiative supporting interprofessional teams who are exploring a variety of innovative and important clinical questions that have the potential to have a tremendous impact on the quality of care and patient experience research.
After a rigorous review and selection process, we were one of 7 research teams that were successfully awarded $8,295 to continue our research. We plan to use this funding to build on our Capstone project by moving to ideation and co-creation through Experience Based Design with PAC staff, patients, and family.
Following this process, we will guide the staff to translate and implement these change ideas within the clinic.  Our research will be guided by Quality Improvement Science.  We hope to study the impact and sustainability of these changes.
Agnes Ryzynski, Raja Ravi & Andrew Wan