Education:

• Hon. B.Sc., 1990, biochemistry, University of Manitoba, Canada
• MD, 1994, medicine, University of Manitoba, Canada
• Internship, 1995, medicine, University of British Columbia Teaching Hospitals, Canada
• Residency, 1998,internal medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard University, U.S.
• Fellowship, 2000, hospitalist outcomes, University of California, San Francisco, U.S.

Appointments and Affiliations:

• Scientist, evaluative clinical sciences, Veterans & Community Research Program, Sunnybrook Research Institute
• Director, Centre for Patient Safety, University of Toronto
• Associate professor, department of medicine, University of Toronto
• Adjunct faculty, Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto
• Adjunct faculty, Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering, faculty of engineering, University of Toronto
• Member, Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Toronto
• Canada Research Chair in Patient Safety and Quality Improvement, Tier 2
• Adjunct scientist, Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences
• Staff physician, general internal medicine, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

• Editor-in-chief, British Medical Journal Quality & Safety

Research Foci:

• Patient safety
• Quality improvement and knowledge translation
• Evidence synthesis (systematic reviews and meta-analyses)

Research Summary:

Dr. Shojania's research focuses on identifying evidence-based patient safety interventions and effective strategies for translating evidence into practice. His work has appeared in leading journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and The Journal of the American Medical Association(JAMA). He has also delivered presentations on patient safety to the U.S. Institute of Medicine. In 2001, while at the University of California, Dr. Shojania led a team from 10 academic institutions across the U.S. to produce Making Healthcare Safer, a comprehensive report for the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, that synthesizes the evidence supporting more than 75 practices to patient safety. Highlights of the report appeared in JAMA, and more than 140,000 copies of the report have been obtained since its release.

Dr. Shojania's research includes substantial work in the field of evidence synthesis, such as systematic reviews and meta-analyses. In addition to publishing systematic reviews on a variety of topics, Dr. Shojania developed an electronic strategy for identifying systematic reviews that the U.S. National Library of Medicine adopted as the search filter for reviews built into PubMed. He also conducted a “survival analysis” of 100 clinically important meta-analyses published from 1995 to 2005 to determine how soon quantitative or qualitative changes in the literature indicate the need for updating the previous systematic review. This work, published in Annals of Internal Medicine (with companion methods articles appearing in Journal of Clinical Epidemiology), showed that major changes in evidence that would affect clinical decision-making occurred within two years in 23% of cases, within one year in 15% and prior to publication in 7%.

Educational Initiatives:

Dr. Shojania has also led educational initiatives in patient safety. He has written 13 case-based articles in Annals of Internal Medicine and produced two websites for the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which each receive about 100,000 visits per month. In addition, he has authored a book on patient safety. This book, Internal Bleeding: The Truth Behind America's Terrifying Epidemic of Medical Mistakes received excellent reviews in the New York Times , San Francisco Chronicle, Baltimore Sun, British Medical Journal , and the Journal of the American Medical Association. It has sold more than 50,000 copies.

Dr. Shojania's scholarly activities have also extended to his clinical work. He has written two articles in the rational clinical exam series in JAMA, served as the discussant for two articles in the clinical problem solving series in NEJM and authored a chapter in the widely used online textbook, UpToDate.

In January 2011, Dr. Shojania became editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal Group, BMJ Quality and Safety.

Selected Publications:

See current publications list at PubMed.

1. Tricco AC, Ivers NM, Grimshaw JM, Moher D, Turner L, Galipeau J, Halperin I, Vachon B, Ramsay T, Manns B, Tonelli M, Shojania K. Effectiveness of quality improvement strategies on the management of diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Lancet. 2012;379:2252–61.
2. Shojania KG, Silver I, Levinson W. Continuing medical education and quality improvement: a match made in heaven? Ann Intern Med. 2012;156(4):305–8.
3. Shojania KG, Jennings A, Mayhew A, Ramsay C, Eccles M, Grimshaw J. Effect of point-of-care computer reminders on physician behaviour: a systematic review. CMAJ. 2010;182(5):E216–225.
4. Shojania KG, Levinson W. Clinicians in quality improvement: a new career pathway in academic medicine. JAMA. 2009;301(7):766–68.
5. Shojania KG, Forster AJ. Hospital mortality: when failure is not a good measure of success. CMAJ. 2008;179(2):153–57.

Related News and Stories:

• Q&A: Dr. Kaveh Shojania (PDF from Sunnybrook Research Institute Magazine, 2009)
• Director of the Centre for Patient Safety Appointed: SRI scientist appointed as inaugural director of the new University of Toronto Centre for Patient Safety (January 15, 2009)
• CV: Dr. Kaveh Shojania (Nov. 1, 2008)

Related Links:

• U of T profile, Institute for Health Policy, Management and Evaluation