Emergency physician nabs awards for research on patient care

Dr. Grewal, a clinician-scientist at the Schwartz/Reisman Emergency Medicine Institute (SREMI) at Sinai Health, focuses her research on improving emergency care for patients with cancer, blood clots, and head injuries among patients on blood thinners.

These National and International accolades include:

• The 2nd place plenary award from the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP), as well as the CAEP 2021 New Investigator Award for her research abstract entitled, "Intracranial hemorrhage after head injury among anticoagulated elderly patients seen in the emergency department: A population-based cohort study."
• Dr. Grewal also won the CAEP 2021 CanVECTOR Research Award for her work on venous thromboembolism and ankle fractures, "Venous thromboembolism in patients discharged from the emergency department with ankle fractures: A population-based cohort study."
• She also won a plenary award from the Society of Academic Emergency Physicians (SAEM) 2021 for the same abstract.
• And finally, Dr. Grewal was the supervisor for a University of Toronto emergency medicine resident, Dr. Sally Kang, who was awarded one of the Top Resident Research Awards for CAEP 2021 for her abstract "Patient characteristics and outcomes associated with cancer diagnosis in the emergency department: A systematic review."

“I’m very honoured that not only my research, but the hard work of our entire team is being recognized by our peers,” said Dr. Grewal. “It just goes to show the level of team work involved in these studies. Emergency medicine is a relatively new field compared to other areas of medicine, so there’s a lot of opportunity through research to improve emergency care for patients.”

As a health services researcher, Dr. Grewal taps into province-wide, health databases to look at trends among patients across Ontario. She recently found that cancer patients in Ontario frequently require emergency care, and that almost one in four emergency department visits by these patients are due to possible infection.

“These findings will inform future studies and I’m hoping we can positively impact outcomes and care for these patients,” said Dr. Grewal.

Dr. Grewal is also using similar databases to quantify how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected emergency department usage and health outcomes of non-COVID-19 patients in Ontario. With many emergency departments reporting a significant drop in patient visits at the height of the pandemic, there is concern that people who should be seeking emergency care are delaying their care, and that their health is suffering as a result.

“Keerat has been a fantastic addition to the SREMI team,” said Dr. Bjug Borgundvaag, Director of SREMI. “Her areas of research and ability to use ICES data to answer these important questions really strengthens and broadens our research capacity.”

More on the inspiring work being done at the Schwartz/Reisman Emergency Medicine Institute at Sinai Health.