SickKids
Barbara Couper, RN MN DrPH Candidate, is a clinical manager and nurse with experience in project management, paediatric health-care education, change management, program evaluation, process improvement and Lean Methods. She is currently the manager of the Anesthesia and Pain Medicine Ambulatory programs, including Chronic and Transitional Pain and pre-anesthesia clinics at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids).
After starting her nursing career on the multi-organ transplant and medical specialties at SickKids, she completed a master's in nursing with a collaborative in community development at the University of Toronto. She was one of the first Academic Fellows at the Center for Global Child Health (CGCH) at SickKids focusing on training for healthcare workers in low-resource setting through education, simulation and program evaluation. After the fellowship she became an Interprofessional Education Specialist at CGCH. In 2023 she moved to management in perioperative services for Anesthesia and Pain Medicine. Over the past 2 years she has lead several large initiatives including the expansion of the Chronic and Transitional Pain clinics through strategic planning and operational leadership and FLIPP (Flow Lean Improvement Project for Patients, Providers and Parents) in the pre-anesthesia clinic which drove a process for all elective cases to be screened by the clinic to ensure they were prepared for the day of surgery.
Barbara is currently completing a Doctor of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, with research focused on patient and family engagement in paediatric care, locally at SickKids and internationally in low-resourced settings. Her current research is using institutional ethnography to understand how patient and family engagement is created through institutional structures at SickKids.
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Monday, April 14, 2025
2:30 PM – 3:30 PM EDT