A message from Dr. Jeff Pike:
“We are pleased to announce the appointment of two new directors for the new St. Paul’s – Dr. Heather O’Donnell and Dr. Amin Sajan. In advance of design development with the selected proponent team starting late this Fall, Heather and Amin are joining me to engage the clinical teams to optimize our models of care as we look to the future. Acknowledging that we will work hard to integrate our efforts across the whole project, each of us will focus on different components of the project. Dr. Sajan will focus on acute care and inpatients, Dr. O’Donnell will focus on outpatient care and procedures, and I will focus on the Clinical Support and Research Centre. Please join me in welcoming Heather and Amin to the role.” -Dr. Jeff Pike
About Dr. Heather O’Donnell
Heather has been enthusiastically involved in the NSP Redevelopment process thus far as a stakeholder in the Outpatient Care Centre component. She began her experience at St. Paul’s in 2006 as a student and has worked at PHC since 2016 as a General Ophthalmologist and Clinical Assistant Professor. She acknowledges that St. Paul’s is a special place and feels that her best days are ones where she is able to engage with teams throughout the hospital to treat patients in ways that she knows would not be possible in other institutions. Heather has amassed many hours of teaching and speaking, including her past work teaching practical nursing to students on First Nations reserves in Saskatchewan and her current work with the Heiltsuk health center to deliver ophthalmic care to the community of Bella Bella. She credits these experiences with offering her a heightened awareness of the necessity and importance of incorporating indigenous peoples and cultural values in the project in a meaningful way. Dr. O’Donnell is a firm believer that to achieve transformative care for our patients we need a team that truly believes we can build the best hospital in the world.
About Dr. Amin Sajan
Amin is passionate about innovation and has been a strategic leader in healthcare management across globally diverse environments. He began with PHC as an Emergency Physician, Consultant, and Clinical Assistant Professor back in 2005. In 2012, he and his family relocated to Abu Dhabi where he worked as the Emergency Department Division Chief and Operations Lead: providing both patient care and facilitating change to workflow practices to optimize both operational efficiency and physician productivity at the facility. Amin has been back with PHC since 2018 where he continues to work in the realm of Emergency Medicine. Beyond that, Amin is also the Managing Director at an innovative start-up that specializes in design and inventing products (perhaps you’ve heard of the Banana Guard?). Recently, the company has been focussed on medical innovation projects including a non-contact monitoring system for patient vital signs in hospital waiting areas and a novel simulation device for the practice of ECMO.