The College is pleased to welcome Dr. Sarah Reid as the 2025 CPSO Board Chair. Dialogue recently spoke to Dr. Reid about her path to medicine and her work at the College.
A pediatric emergency physician at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and associate professor at the University of Ottawa, Dr. Reid is passionate about ensuring that all children receive the best emergency care, no matter where they live. To this end, she has spent the past 20 years focused on the provision of continuing professional development and the dissemination of point of care resources for use in emergency departments across Canada. In her role as editor and Ontario representative for Translating Emergency Knowledge for Kids (TREKK), she works with the team to link pediatric researchers and experts with practitioners out in the field by creating simple, easy-to-access, web-based resources to treat everything from ear infections and pneumonia to meningitis, sepsis, and multisystem trauma.
Dr. Reid attributes TREKK’s success to a continuous improvement process that brings together end users and the creators of the clinical tools through focus groups and other engagement activities. “The feedback has been really excellent,” she says, “especially from physicians working in remote or under-resourced parts of Canada.”
Dr. Reid earned her undergraduate degree at McGill University before completing her medical degree at the University of Ottawa. It was during her clerkship when she realized that pediatrics was the specialty for her. “There's just something so wonderful and joyful about working with kids,” she says. “I loved working with families and the challenge of providing care to a variety of ages.”
As rewarding as her career is, Dr. Reid readily admits that it can also take its toll. “You’re usually meeting a family on their worst day,” she says and, as the health-care system continues to struggle post-pandemic, the challenges of providing excellent care to children have only gotten tougher.
Dr. Reid is passionate about ensuring that all children receive the best emergency care, no matter where they live.
Still, Dr. Reid attributes her ability to deal with the stress to both her family and her colleagues at CHEO. “I have an amazing husband – we've being together since before I started medical school – and he's just an incredible support,” she says. “I also work with fantastic people in a very supportive environment where we understand the pressures and challenges happening in emergency health care. Because we’re all having similar experiences, there's a real camaraderie that's very special.”
Since being elected to the Board (then Council) in 2018, Dr. Reid has been Chair of the Quality Assurance Committee, as well as a member of the Policy Working Group, Governance and Executive Committees. Dr. Reid has been involved with CPSO’s quality oversight work and cites the Quality Improvement (QI) Partnership Program for Hospitals as an example of a key initiative undertaken by the College. The program is designed so that hospital-based physicians complete their mandated QI requirements while simultaneously fulfilling their hospital QI initiatives. The approach, she says, reduces duplication of work for busy physicians. “It’s about recognizing that hospital-based physicians already have layers of oversight in that setting and are engaged in many different quality improvement projects. This program allows us to recognize that work,” she says.
Dr. Reid is looking forward to the year ahead as Board Chair, working with her fellow Directors to ensure the College continues to deliver on its vision of trusted Ontario doctors providing great care to their patients.