Two decades of advancing knowledge: Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Queen’s Collaboration for Health Care Quality, a JBI Centre of Excellence

| 24 Jan 2025

The Queen’s Collaboration for Health Care Quality (QcHcQ) celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2024. Dr. Christina Godfrey, Associate Professor, Queen’s School of Nursing and Director, QcHcQ, shares her thoughts on this milestone partnership.

What is the mission of the QcHcQ and what does it mean to be a JBI Centre of Excellence?

With more than 2.5 million scientific articles published globally each year, it is extremely challenging for healthcare providers to identify relevant literature, evaluate its credibility, and adapt it to their clinical settings. As a collaborating center of the global JBI network, our goal is to facilitate this process by supporting training on how to best review that evidence and offering healthcare providers the essential data they need to deliver high-quality care, both at a local and global level. We work closely with partners to identify priority topics and develop and conduct evidence synthesis studies. JBI is a global organization dedicated to improving healthcare outcomes through the development and dissemination of evidence-based practice, systematic reviews, and clinical guidelines. The QcHcQ was JBI’s first collaborating partner in North America, and in 2016 was named a JBI Centre of Excellence.

Can you tell us how the QcHcQ came to be?

The seeds for the QcHcQ were planted at a conference attended by Alan Pearson, founder of JBI, and Dr. Margaret Harrison, an implementation scientist and Professor at Queen’s School of Nursing in 2004. At the time, Dr. Pearson planned to expand JBI beyond Australia and saw Dr. Harrison’s work as a perfect fit to bring that vision to life in Canada. Dr. Harrison recognized this as a tremendous opportunity to take a leading role in promoting the best available science in nursing practice in the Ontario region. The Centre--initially called Queen’s Joanna Briggs Collaboration—was supported by a generous grant from the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, with additional in-kind support from Queen’s University and JBI. This financial backing, together with the dedication and enthusiasm of several faculty members, played a crucial role in the Centre's founding.

What are some of the Centre’s greatest achievements?

From the very beginning, the Centre has been committed to aligning its research with the priorities of clinical practice. I believe that forming key partnerships has been a significant accomplishment. For instance, early in the Centre’s history we developed an academic-practice partnership with South Eastern Ontario's Kingston Health Sciences Centre. Its local research council provided us with 36 pressing topics that they wanted to explore. Another important milestone came in 2009, when the Centre expanded its reach beyond the regional level to create a nationwide academic policy initiative aimed at enhancing patient safety. With the guidance of a national Advisory Board of experts from leading safety organizations, we gained valuable insights into the critical areas that required attention in this field.

Another achievement is in providing training to an ever-increasing number of clinicians, students, researchers, and librarians in the JBI methodology, helping spread knowledge and expertise. We offer highly sought-after comprehensive systematic review training programs featuring the JBI methodology. Between 2023 and 2024, 121 trainees completed the course, a strong testament of our dedication to training new people in the science of evidence synthesis.

Can you provide some examples of how the Centre contributes to evidence-based healthcare?

A perfect example is a scoping review on the prevalence and distribution of adverse drug events in children within community settings that Dr. Kim Sears, Deputy Director QcHcQ, and I are working on. Pediatric medications are often under-researched in clinical trials, with dosing formulations either unavailable or derived from adult data. This increases the risk of adverse drug events in children. This risk is further increased by the limited direct support and guidance that patients and caregivers may receive in community settings. In this review, we compiled worldwide data regarding pediatric adverse drug events within non-hospital and outpatient settings. The results highlight the most common classes of drugs that are associated with adverse drug events in each country. These results allow a focused approach to prioritizing safety, guiding targeted strategies to improve prescription, preparation, dispensing, and administration of drugs for children in community settings.

On a more global level, several members and I are involved in multiple international committees focused on advancing the methodology of evidence synthesis. This includes developing and publishing guidance on the conduct of large scoping reviews, identifying the “right” review tool amongst various synthesis methods, and the role of automation tools in completing reviews.

As the director, how do you envision the future of QcHcQ evolving in the next few years?

We look forward to creating more partnerships to address the most pressing clinical questions, and providing review training workshops that remain accessible to all. The Centre also offers a mentoring program where all trainees and graduate students can seek support and guidance as they complete evidence synthesis projects. This mentoring program is set to expand to include other groups across Canada with the goal of fostering a community of practice for researchers conducting evidence synthesis. We are looking forward to continuing to grow systems that promote and advance the synthesis, transfer and utilization of evidence to improve healthcare outcomes locally and globally. With the solid foundation built over the past two decades, the Centre is poised to continue making a difference for many years to come.

Visit the QcHcQ's 'about us' page for more information on the Centre's journey over the last 20 years.

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Two decades of advancing knowledge: Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Queen’s Collaboration for Health Care Quality, a JBI Centre of Excellence

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