Dean Henderson

Lean Trainer and Consultant

Dean has over a decade of experience in healthcare working in a variety of acute care hospitals across Ontario and the USA. He is trained as an Occupational Therapist working with multiple interdisciplinary teams to provide high quality patient care and improved outcomes. As a Quality and Patient Safety Consultant in acute care, Dean has supported diagnostic imaging; laboratory medicine and genetics; cancer services and mental health in advancing quality and patient safety. Dean has now taken his expertise and experience to the community side of healthcare helping to respond to both the changing health needs of Canadians and advances in health technology. He is focusing on creating standard work within the community sector and the dementia population.

Dean has experience building capability and capacity among front line staff through Yellow Belt training delivery and has expertise in teaching, coaching and mentoring project leaders in value stream mapping; root cause analysis; Kaizen events, 5S implementation, among other Lean tools. Believing in the power of collaboration and co-creating value, he has the capability to bring all stakeholders together and work effectively to drive continuous improvement. Dean has led various Lean projects including streamlining the suicide risk assessment process in an emergency department to establish one pillar of a vision of zero suicide. He played a significant role in creating a closed loop communication process for urgent and unexpected radiology findings leading to improved patient outcomes, and also led an initiative to improve workflow in radiotherapy and decrease the time between the decision to treat and treatment, thereby helping to increase throughput and improve staff satisfaction.

Both Lean Yellow and Green Belt certified, Dean holds a Bachelor of Kinesiology from Acadia University; MSc. in Occupational Therapy from Queens University and an MBA from the University of Liverpool.