When staff become patients: Stephanie works to strengthen care through lived experience

As Stephanie Mailman-Crouse waited for her surgery to begin, her professional experience in healthcare slipped into the background. In that moment, she was simply a patient placing trust in others.

“As I lay on the operating table, I wasn’t thinking about my job,” she says. “I was thinking about the trust and confidence I have in the people behind the scenes and in the care they provide.”

In 2024, Stephanie underwent a single mastectomy at the age of 35, following a breast cancer diagnosis.

Experiencing the healthcare system from the perspective of a patient reaffirmed why she has dedicated her career to strengthening the processes behind the scenes to ensure surgical care is safe, reliable, and always there when people need it.

As provincial quality leader for Medical Device Reprocessing (MDR) with Nova Scotia Health, Stephanie works every day to strengthen the systems that protect patients. Medical device reprocessing departments across the province play a vital role in supporting patient and staff safety, and ensuring the tools and instruments necessary for surgery are sterilized, quality-tested and are in proper working condition. 

“MDR is one of those areas that people don’t often see, but its impact is felt in every surgery or procedure in hospitals and clinics across Nova Scotia,” Stephanie says.

Stephanie’s role focuses on quality assurance across MDR departments. This includes standardizing practices, developing policies, analyzing quality and safety data, helping MDR departments adapt as surgical volumes increase, and ensuring alignment with national standards and industry best practices. While her work often happens behind the scenes, it is foundational to safe, reliable patient care.

“My career in healthcare began in administrative roles, starting on the switchboard at South Shore Regional Hospital in Bridgewater,” she says. “When I started supporting provincial perioperative (surgical) services and MDR, I realized how much responsibility rests with teams most people never meet. And I gained a deep appreciation for how critical this work is to patient safety.

“Lying on the operating table before surgery, I experienced both vulnerability and a sense of calm,” she says. “The calm came from knowing every instrument in the room had been properly cleaned, inspected, and assembled by the MDR team behind the scenes, and this was for my safety as a patient.”

As a wife, mother to an eight-year-old daughter, and an active member of her South Shore community, that moment deepened her understanding of how quality and safety processes directly affect patients and their families across the province. 

"Being both a healthcare professional and a patient changes how you see the system,” she says. “You understand how essential it is that quality and safety processes work – not just on paper, but in practice.”

Her lived experience also strengthened her commitment to improving access to care close to home. Stephanie has volunteered with the team that brought the Run for the Cure to the South Shore, supporting cancer research and community awareness.

In 2025, she supported the Health Services Foundation of the South Shore in raising more than $170,000 to bring the MOLLI system -– a wire-free and radiation-free technology that helps surgeons precisely locate breast lesions – to South Shore Regional Hospital. She also recently volunteered for the foundation’s Gift from the Heart Radiothon that raised over $182,000 to bring breast MRI technology to South Shore Regional Hospital.

Whether working at a provincial level to support systems to enhance quality and patient safety or advocating locally to improve access to care, Stephanie’s work is grounded in a simple belief: “Quality assurance in MDR is foundational to patient safety, trust, and outcomes – and this cannot happen without recognizing the efforts, support and value of these teams.”

In addition to her role as provincial quality leader for Medical Device Reprocessing (MDR), Stephanie serves as secretary for the board of directors of the Canadian Association of Medical Device Reprocessing (CAMDR). 

She was recently featured in an episode of Beyond Clean, a podcast that highlights the people and processes that support patient safety in surgical care. Stephanie appeared alongside her colleague Danny Leblanc, manager of Medical Device Reprocessing for Nova Scotia Health’s Western Zone and president, CAMDR board of directors. The podcast was also co-hosted by Barry Pickrem, a medical device reprocessing technician with Nova Scotia Health's Central Zone.

Learn more about Medical Device Reprocessing:

Medical Device Reprocessing Week | Nova Scotia Health

Barry Pickrem: Setting the gold standard in medical device reprocessing | Nova Scotia Health

Medical device reprocessing (MDR) supports surgical quality assurance and mitigates risk | Nova Scotia Health

Nova Scotia Health leader champions medical device reprocessing (MDR) from high schools to the national stage | Nova Scotia Health

Visit information on breast screening eligibility and guidelines including information on signs and symptoms of breast cancer, visit nsbreastscreening.ca.   

Photo of Stephanie Mailman-Crouse.