Skeate, Robert
MD, MSc
Associate Medical Director, Education and Special Projects
Canadian Blood Services
Assistant Professor
Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology – University of Toronto
Research or Clinical Interests
Dr. Skeate’s research has focused on blood product quality, transfusion reactions, post-graduate medical education, and health informatics. His primary focus has been redesigning how Canadian Blood Services delivers medical services to internal and external customers. Under his leadership, local medical offices in St. Johns, Halifax, Ottawa, Toronto, Hamilton, London, and Winnipeg have been combined into one virtual office (Eastern Medical Services). Blood Services staff requiring nursing or physician support now have one point of contact for both urgent (one on-call number) and non-urgent (unified e-mail address) matters, and receive more efficient and consistent support.
His second major area of focus has been education. Through his participation with the Royal College Transfusion Medicine Subspecialty Committee, he made important contributions to the transformation of Transfusion Medicine physician training from a traditional time-based program to a competency-based (Area of Focused Competence) program. He is currently director of the Canadian Blood Services portion of the Transfusion Medicine training programs in Canada. A flagship element to this program is the weekly Learn Transfusion series for Transfusion trainees, which is made freely available to the broader medical community countrywide through easy-to-access webinar technology. Over 900 hours of continuing professional education credits are delivered per academic year to physicians, nurses, and laboratory technologists through participation in this program.
Brief Biography
Dr. Skeate attended the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis for his medical degree, his master's degree in Health Informatics, and his training in Clinical Pathology and Transfusion Medicine. He then became a staff physician in the blood bank at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, an assistant medical director at the American Red Cross blood center in St. Paul, and an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. He came to Canada in 2009 to work with Canadian Blood Services.
For general enquiries about research at Canadian Blood Services, please contact us at:
Centre for Innovation
Canadian Blood Services
1800 Alta Vista Drive
Ottawa, Ontario K1G 4J5