ROLES: Digital Design Specialist (Immersive Learning Design, AI Innovation, Video Producer, Social Media)

This has been an amazing year of momentum, where my creative digital work has not only moved forward, but come together in some very special ways.

A Year of Creative Innovation, Collaboration, and Recognition

In April 2026, I was honoured to be a recipient of this years SickKids Learning Institute Award of Excellence as a member of the Paediatric Project ECHO team, who I joined back in 2020. It’s a recognition awarded through peer nomination and SickKids leadership review, which makes it particularly meaningful. *I had the privilege of receiving an individual nomination for the award in 2025. The award reflects not just the outcomes of our work, but how we work – nurturing a high performing creative team making impact through thoughtful, supportive, collaboration and a shared persistent focus on improving the learning and care experience.

For me, this recognition sits alongside a broader arc of work I’ve been deeply engaged in, as I’ve contined to grow as a digital design specialist working across healthcare education, storytelling, and emerging technologies. Over the past year, this has included leading the development of an AI-driven immersive learning module, contributing to knowledge translation initiatives grounded in equity and cultural context, and producing hospital-wide educational media focused on AI.

At its core, my work is about designing experiences that help people learn, connect, and ultimately provide better care. That work doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens in collaboration with clinicians, educators, researchers, and teams who bring diverse perspectives and expertise to the table.

This award is a reflection of that collective effort.

Nominating Letter: SickKids Learning Institute Award of Excellence

We work with incredible and inspiring leaders at SickKids. We’re also privileged to serve under their guidance, and the furture foward vision of medical education they drive, always centred on the commitment to excellence in care and compassion.

My manager, Kelly Warmington, Manager at the Learning Institute, is one of those leaders. Kelly nominated our team for this award, with a letter of support from the Paediatric Project ECHO Clinical Leads (Dr. Catherine Diskin, Dr. Jill Hamilton, Michelle Ho, Dr. Natalie Jewitt, Sara Klein, Dr. Jennifer Stinson, Dr. Naiyi Sun and Nicole Wagschal):

“I am proud to nominate the Paediatric Project ECHO Team. Paeds ECHO is a free, virtual education program for primary care providers in Ontario, and this team delivers by planning and hosting over 100 Zoom sessions annually across four specialty areas. This team is intentional and incredibly dynamic. From learner-centered educational design to meaningful evaluation, they always put participants first. They tailor each communication, collaborate to develop responsive curricula, and ensure a seamless virtual experience, session after session, specialty after specialty. They also help achieve the Learning Institute strategy in powerful, practical ways: they are advancing individualized learning via AI through an evidence-based module that allows primary care providers to practice motivational interviewing skills with a simulated patient. They strive for precision learning by working with our Clinical Leads to leverage analytics and evaluation data to develop meaningful, targeted curricula, and to support strategic knowledge translation activities.

By combining this innovative, technology-enabled approach with scholarship, they won the Innovation in Knowledge Sharing Award. And they embody our key enablers – equity and partnerships, on a daily basis – including the patient and primary care provider voice, a focus on user experience, and northern outreach such as their partnership with Indigenous Services Canada.

Within the team, trust and psychological safety stem from reliability, open communication, and a sense of belonging, and that is exactly what I observe. I am so proud to work alongside this team. They are truly deserving of this award!

Amy, Alyssa, Uttara, Chitra, Deiren and Riley, congratulations on your award and thank you for your incredible contributions to the Learning Institute team!”

– Learning Institute Award of Excellence Nomination Letter

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ROLES: Author, Digital Design Specialist, Video Editor

I’m grateful and honoured to share two recent acknowledgements that have deeply resonated with me, both personally and professionally.

Gold at the Digital Health Awards – Spring 2025

Our video series, Ojibwe Language in Epilepsy Care: A Creative Medical Translation Project for Enhancing Cultural Competency, was awarded Gold at the Digital Health Awards – Spring 2025 edition. This recognition is a testament to the collaborative spirit and cultural sensitivity that guided this project from the beginning.

The series was developed as part of the ECHO Epilepsy Ontario program, where I serve as the Digital Design Specialist. Working alongside Indigenous educators, healthcare professionals, and community partners, we created a set of videos that translate key medical terms used in epilepsy care into Ojibwe, contextualized within both medical and cultural frameworks. The goal was to foster cultural competency and inclusive communication in healthcare settings.

The response has been wonderful — with over 55,000 organic views on YouTube, the videos have become a meaningful educational tool for clinicians, learners, and communities alike. You can read more about the project and award on the ECHO Epilepsy Ontario website.

“The Ojibwe word for brain is wiindib. While Indigenous peoples might not always refer to the “brain” in the Western scientific sense, their Epilepsy treatments often aim to harmonize mental and spiritual states, which involve the brain’s functions.”

This is my second Gold, Digital Health Award. I last won Gold for my healthcare education videos series produced in my work as Digital Health Specialist with the Reitman Centre at Sinai Health. We won Gold for our Mental Health Video Series for Family Caregivers of Someone Living with Dementia.

Nominated for the SickKids Learning Institute Award of Excellence

This spring, I was also nominated for the SickKids Learning Institute Award of Excellence, alongside two incredible colleagues. The award “recognizes an individual staff member or team in the Learning Institute who contributes to the achievement of the Learning Institute’s priorities; demonstrates the SickKids values of compassion, integrity, collaboration, inclusion, innovation and excellence; and demonstrates strong Learning Institute citizenship including creating a positive and collaborative environment.”

While I didn’t receive the final award (a well-deserved honour that went to a brilliant team member from the SIMKids Simulation program), the nomination itself was a moment of deep significance for my work and service with SickKids, and was accompanied by a wonderful letter of nomination and congratulations from Lennox Huang, Chief Medical Officer and Vice President, Education, Medical & Academic Affairs and Kelly McMillen, Executive Director, Learning Institute.

The nomination was submitted by my program manager, Annie Jiwan and my senior manager, Kelly Warmington, who highlighted my work in storytelling through video — from capturing the emotional depth of palliative care to celebrating the energy of child life specialists and the resilience of patients and families. It also acknowledged the behind-the-scenes care and collaboration that goes into every project: the check-ins, revisions, and long drives going the distance to get the story right.

I was especially touched by this line from the nomination:

“Deiren is a model LI citizen and has contributed significantly to creating a positive and collaborative work environments on our team, across the LI, SickKids and with external partners through his storytelling. His videos are gifts that spark joy – when watching them, you get the opportunity to pause and reflect on past accomplishments, and how far you’ve come…Deiren’s stories touch clinicians, learners, and members of the ECHO community, including underserved groups. His work reflects his commitment to excellence and empathy and demonstrates his ability to uplift others through his lens.”

Learning Institute Award of Excellence Nomination Letter

To be recognized in this way by colleagues I admire so deeply is a gift in itself.

A Culture of “Yes” and “We Can”

The SickKids Learning Institute is a place where excellence is not just a goal — it’s a shared value. It’s a culture where the words “Yes” and “We can” are most regularly the first out of the gate. Where ideas find good soil and gardeners to help cultivate them. I’m grateful every day to be part of a team that believes in the power of storytelling, creativity, and collaboration to make a difference in healthcare education.

Thanks for reading — and thank you to everyone who continues to support and inspire this work.

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ROLES: Author, Digital Producer, Interactive Experience Design, Video Editor, Digital Asset Design

In 2022, in my role as Digital Specialist at SickKids Learning Institute, I had the pleasure of working on an amazing interactive continuing medical education webinar series called Collaborative Conversations with Families to Advance the Clinical Care of Children with Medical Complexities and Disabilities, abbreviated to C6.

The American Academy of Pediatrics published a medical paper I had the honour of being a co-author of, exploring the development, execution and key learnings of this forward thinking CME series in their flagship peer-reviewed journal “Pediatrics”, under the title “Family Partnership in Continuing Medical Education: A Collaborative Experience“. The senior authors on the paper are the incredible physicians and international healthcare leaders highlighted below.

The webinar series was a collaborative partnership between SickKids Learning Institute, Family Voices a network of family organizations in the U.S. and the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health. leadership of two incredible pediatric complex care physicians at SickKids, Dr. Catherine Diskin and Dr. Eyal Cohen, the webinar series was rooted in the importance of patient/family partnership in clinical care & research. As Dr. Cohen described, the C6 webinar series was “an extension of this principle into continuing medical education” and involved a

What’s the problem? What’s the answer?

When the series wrapped in the summer of 2022, Dr. Catherine Diskin spearheaded the authorship of a collaborative publication whose purpose was to digest and reflect on C6’s answer to the problem that in the field of continuing medical education families are rarely involved as true partners in co-design and co-delivery. Through this process we came to formulate how C6 was filled with beneficial and practical examples of dialogic education, which is “rooted in nonhierarchical conversation, incorporates patient experiences to deepen learners’ perspectives and values through reflection.”

With the article’s publication last by the AAP last week, Dr. Cohen did a beautiful job in taking to Twitter to summarize the publication with this tweet thread:

Parents have a PhD in Life Experience

As one of the family leads, educators and mother to a child with medical complexity reflected during a C6 session, “Parents have a PhD in life experience. And we’re able to bring that to the clinician and they respect that, and they say “Oh you can talk my language.” And we have these real authentic conversations that get somewhere.” Over 10 months the 10-session C6 webinar was delivered to over 1,600 participants. Family caregivers, youth, and friends of children with medical complexity (CMC) were welcomed to join along with health care professionals, researchers, policy makers, and anyone invested in advancing clinical care in CMC, through which a dynamic and vibrant community discussion ensued in each of the sessions. A 9 minute video highlighting key insights and the dynamic community was compiled which you can watch below.

The entire C6 team was an incredible group to have the honour to work with, and I’d like to sign off with waves of gratitude to my co-authors and first and senior authors, to the incredible families involved and with a massive parting call of gratitude to Dr. Catherine Diskin for her generosity, encouragement, and intellectual and human brilliance in the field of medical education and the realm of compassionate care.

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Inspired by my amazing wee 1-year old nephew River and celebrating the wonder of word and imagination with gratitude for the beautiful absurdist writers and word magicians who have always stirred my heart and soul, I wanted to make this story offering, in honour for #IReadCanadian Day. Also sent with love to my other wee nephews Cameron, Tommy and Malcolm and their growing love of story and the written word.

A little audio recording of Boo the Woo

Boo the Woo

Boo was a busy little bubbly Woo
Where Woos are round, with sticky Zoos

And Doos and Don’ts and Nuggy Noos
With Yays and Rays and Smileys too

So happy joy are all good Woos
And everyday was busy Boo.

Story by Deiren Masterson

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ROLES: Public Speaking, Creative Lead, Digital Specialist, Video Producer / Editor

In December 2021 I was engaged as a presenter at the 4th annual Communications in Healthcare Settings Conference, a national virtual conference bringing together communication professionals working in the health care industry in Canada. The goal of the event is to engage healthcare communications professionals “in different aspects of communications (digital media, social media, corporate communications, community engagement, public relations, patient relations, and other areas) to facilitate important connections and expand their knowledge base together.”

My interactive talk was titled “Deepening Virtual Learning Engagement for Healthcare Professionals: Successfully Deploying Online Collaboration Tools” which I co-presented with my SickKids Learning Institute colleague, Alyssa Gumapac. We presented communications pearls gained from the combined case studies of two highly successful virtual education events that we ran in 20221 via SickKids Learning Institutes’ premiere virtual education program “Paediatric Project ECHO” where we work full-time.

What’s the problem? What’s the answer?

The overview of our talk and the communications challenges and learnings that we addressed was put as follows:

Effective collaboration among health care providers is essential for knowledge transfer and improving patient outcomes. Covid-19 forced many to shift to digital options, but historically this is not that unusual for many collaborative relationships, in part due to geographic distances and time constraints. However, the concerns around stakeholder engagement, especially in a digital realm is an ongoing challenge.

Improve your stakeholder engagement and collaboration through examples from ECHO. Learn how they forged a humorous, and educational learning event that brought together physicians, specialists, administrators and others.

Session Learning Objectives Include:

1. Priming your audience to the event ahead of time to drive up motivation
2. Creating substantive and engaging learning objectives and outcomes, including learning credits
3. Structuring the event to ensure it is fun, engaging, and relevant to your audience

Effective Virtual Engagement & Digital Assets

Working with my amazing SickKids colleagues that include Interfprofessional Education Specialists who always play a critical role in helping us translate clinical pearls into resonate education materials and experience, we worked closely with the clinicians and paediatric specialists that included two amazing physiotherapists who were fully on board with thinking outside the box, and creating novel interactive virtual engagments that included our Body Break satirical exercises, communicating salient clinical tools with humour and fun; a Virtual Scavenger Hunt content that bridged the use of physical and virtual space, and created an energized and highly memorable and effective education experience. The event culminated in a unique graduation ceremony that solidified the the learners clinical takeaways and community engagement experience. I’ve pasted a few clippings below to give you a taste of what that was like.

The Graduation Ceremony – Paediatric ECHO’s Virtual Education Event

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ROLES: Digital Specialist, Creative Lead, Video Producer / Editor

Produced for the SickKids/ Project ECHO Ontario Epilepsy Across the Life Span program, a leading virtual health education program that connects community healthcare practitioners across Ontario with epilepsy specialists and neurology experts in the province’s leading academic health centres.

What’s the problem? What’s the answer?

As the ECHO Epilepsy community continues to grow it faces the ongoing challenge of reaching practitioners, particularly in the more rural and undeserved regions of Ontario. To help bridge this gap I developed and lead a strategic digital initiative revealing the impact and benefits of the program to the medical knowledge, skills, expertise and patient care practices of our broad learner demographic which includes neurology specialists, community and family practice physicians, psychiatrists, nurses, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, social workers, and other inter-professional healthcare practitioners.

In my role as Digital Specialist with SickKids Learning Institute, I produced a series of high quality digital testimonials as both social card pull-quotes and digital video animations that quickly got at the heart of the program impact and invited potential learner who have not heard of ECHO but could benefit from the program, to hear and see how the project can benefit their medical and professional needs. These digital assets were shared through a strategic social media and email campaign and within the structure of our virtual education sessions and drove traffic to our website where they are published on our “In My Words – Testimonials” webpage.

Dr. Jude Obomigie, Family Physician – Video animation (Time: 2 min.)

Social Card Pull-Quotes

Dr. George Derbyshire, Paediatric Neurologist – Video animation (Time: 1 min. 43 sec.)

The post In My Words | Physician Testimonial Digital Series appeared first on Relative Strangers Interactive.

As with all vision projects, they require support and if you’re interested in supporting us in any way, be it financial support to help us with the costs in producing more, or be it in other ways of contributing, including sharing your own story, please don’t hesitate to send me an email.

The post Finding Meaning: Dementia & The Family Caregiver Story Project | “Nadia and her Mama” appeared first on Relative Strangers Interactive.

In the summer of 2020 I responded to a call-out for participants within the family caregiver advocacy group that I am a member of, organized through the Ontario Caregiver Organization and the Change Foundation. What was then an “urgent request for a caregiver to be interviewed by André Picard, Journalist for the Globe and Mail…for a project on on how to improve elder care post-Covid”, turned into a wonderful opportunity to dig deep into a conversation with André Picard about my caregiver journey as a primary caregiver for both of my parents in their home and in their short-lived Long Term Care experience. From that conversation Andre featured my caregiving story and journey with both of my elderly parents in a chapter called “Conscripted by Love” in his important 2021 book, “Neglected No More: The Urgent Need To Improve The Lives Of Canada’s Elders In The Wake Of A Pandemic“.

The interview also connected full circle to the first-class “caregiver training” that I had experienced, post B.A. and from ages 24 to 31, when I made a very unconventional and unexpected choice to go to live and work as a live-in caregiver in a community caring for people with developmental disabilities called L’Arche Daybreak (part of the International Federation of L’Arche communities), where people like my dear friend John Smeltzer (who was a dynamo of love and who was also born with Down Syndrome), shaped my life and helped me forge the path between creative communications and healthcare and healthcare advocacy for societies most vulnerable members, that I have been on ever since.

A glimpse into my past – my parents and my wedding day

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ROLES: Digital Health Specialist, Creative Lead, Video Director/ Editor/ Producer

A clinical web series of therapeutic and skills training tips for family caregivers of someone living with dementia. Produced in my position as Digital Health Specialist with the Reitman Centre for Alzheimer Support and Training and The Enhancing Care Program for Dementia Care Patners at Sinai Health.

Winner of the 2019 Gold Award for Video at the Digital Health Awards amongst an international field of medical professionals that included winning entries by MD Anderson Cancer Centre, Healthwise, DaVita…

Visit the Reitman Centre/ Ontario Enhancing Care Program “Dementia Carers” website to have a look at all 9 of the videos in this Digital Health award winning series: Your Questions Answered – A Mental Health Video Series for Family Caregivers of Someone Living with Dementia

I produced this inspiring health education video series in intimate collaboration with all 7 mental health clinicians at the Reitman Centre, along with the Reitman Centre’s Program Manager, Ed McAnanama and L.J. Nelles, an inspiring mental health clincian and educator who helped to develop the ground breaking CARERS program at the Reitman Centre.

Beyond the video production itself, I also acted as the Lead Editor, working directly with each clinician who wrote and brought their personal expertise and clinical voice and insight to each area of focus. From ideation/ development to finished product, both in video format and in the blog posts that accompanied each – we were focused on not only managing the accuracy and helpfulness of the content but also on communicating the critical sense of empathy and compassion that is fundamental to their work with highly stressed and overwhelmed family caregivers.

*Screenshot from the Your Questions Answered webpage

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ROLES: Digital Specialist, Creative Lead, Video Director/ Editor/ Producer

A longer form video produced to celebrate the collaborative work of Mount Sinai Hospital’s reknowned Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and the Information Technology Department uniting bardcoding and the Timeless Milk Tracking system to ensure the safety and health of the fragile lives of NICU babies.

Every day a significant number of high-risk and critically ill babies in Mount Sinai Hospital’s NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) rely on breast milk that is delivered through a bottle or small tube because they are unable to breastfeed. Their barcoding and scanner tracking system is a patient safety initiative that reduces the risk of viral and bacterial transmissions during the collection, storage, preparation and administration of breast milk by ensuring the right milk gets to the right baby.

The post Barcodes & Breastfeeding in NICU at Sinai Health | Video – Medium Length appeared first on Relative Strangers Interactive.

ROLES: Digital Health Specialist, Creative Lead, Video Producer

A clinical interactive web series bringing together family caregivers of someone with dementia across Ontario for a therapeutic education event led by Dr. Joel Sadavoy, MD, founder of Geriatric Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital and Medical Director at The Reitman Centre/ Enhancing Care Program at Sinai Health. Discussing the challenges caregivers are facing in the COVID-19 pandemic and resources and solutions available to them. Delivered via a PHIPA compliant Zoom meeting interface.

What’s the problem? What’s the answer?

Should I use a video communications tool like Facetime or Zoom or the phone when I’m trying to connect with my family member with dementia from a distance, in the midst of contact restrictions imposed on us by the COVID-19 pandemic? This was one of the most resonant and emotionally charged questions raised by family caregivers and discussed with Dr. Sadavoy and other caregivers in attendance at our 2nd Caregiver Check-In event, held on May 14, 2020.

Working with the Medical Lead

Dr. Joel Sadavoy reflects that while caregivers don’t call themselves heroes, their vital dedication to caring for their family or friends with dementia, is the fabric of who they are. As essential as family caregivers are to the reality of ‘care at home’, their need for care themselves, is equally as vital. 

Dr. Joel Sadavoy MD, is the founder of Geriatric Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital, Sinai Health, the medical director of the Enhancing Care Program for Ontario Dementia Care Parnters, and a leader and innovator in the “care of the caregiver” model. He founded the Reitman Centre for Alzheimer’s Support and Training and the ground breaking flagship CARERS program, a unique skills training and therapeutic support program for family caregivers of a person living with dementia. Founded over 10 years ago, this unique evidence-based program offers caregivers unique individualized support and training through the use of patient simulation and expert coaching methods. 

This crisis of home care and unpaid family caregiver support, without which our healthcare system would collapse,  has only become increasingly more noted in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic as the massive cracks in the models of institutional care for the senior population have become more publicly visible and public policy and the awareness of the need for improved models of homecare and long-term care  have surfaced across our province, our nation and in fact, world-wide. 

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ROLES: Digital Health Specialist, Creative Lead, Video Director/ Editor/ Producer

As the Digital Specialist with Sinai Health’s Communications Department I took on the task of celebrating the work of the Volunteer Department for 2108 National Volunteer Week. I created two short, heartfelt glimpses of the often unseen and uncelebrated work of the Sinai Health volunteers, one person from each of the two main hospital campuses, Mount Sinai Hospital and Bridgepoint Active Healthcare.

Maximizing Aging Using Volunteer Engagement (MAUVE) is a volunteer program at Mount Sinai Hospital that sees specially trained volunteers support older adult patients, particularly in mitigating the risks of the onset of delirium, a condition that can pose serious health risks. The program started on the Acute Care for Elders (ACE) unit and is now also in the Emergency Department.

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