Director, Quality, Safety, Strategy, Yukon Hospital Corporation, Whitehorse YT

Lisa De Panfilis is a Registered Nurse and leader in the Yukon healthcare system, caring for populations facing limited access and barriers to healthcare.  A graduate of the Mohawk-McMaster Collaborative Bachelor of Science in Nursing in 2017, Lisa is the Director of Quality, Safety, Strategy at Yukon Hospital Corporation. In addition to her degree, she earned a Masters of Science in Nursing from McMaster University in 2020.

Lisa’s work includes advancing key strategic quality and safety projects, including critical incident stress management, emergency preparedness, implementation of an incident reporting system, and a patient-experience measures survey. The electronic experience survey is pivotal in addressing systemic barriers, racism, and discrimination that patients can experience when accessing health care.

Lisa and her colleagues in the First Nations Health Program at Yukon Hospitals participated in the Cultural Safety Collaborative program with Healthcare Excellence Canada where their project focused on exploring community awareness and understanding of patient feedback mechanisms. They are working to decolonize structures and processes that limit access to providing feedback on care experiences and to support meaningful, timely resolution of concerns.

Prior to her current role, Lisa worked for five years at St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, at an outpatient psychiatry clinic in Hamilton, and most recently as the Territorial Manager of Continuous Quality Improvement in Nunavut. The cornerstone of her work was the development of a process for engaging patients and families after a critical patient safety incident to support healing after harm and rebuilding trust in the health care system. This was developed with support from Healthcare Excellence Canada and patient safety colleagues in British Columbia.

Lisa has won numerous awards, including the President's Award for Leadership in Clinical Nursing Practice from the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO) in 2021 and the Lundbeck Canada Inc. Mental Health Nursing Award from the Canadian Nurses Foundation in 2018.

She is a dedicated volunteer serving as co-chair of the Patient Safety Officers Network with colleagues Indigenous Services Canada. She has served on the advisory committee of Healthcare Excellence Canada, strengthening primary care in northern, rural and remote communities. She was also a member of the merit review panel for the Canadian Nurses Foundation. She was vice-president of the Hamilton chapter of the Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario for three years, and volunteered as vice-president, administration with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Hamilton and Burlington for six years.