Primary Health Care Corporation; Qatar

Dr. Sitti Surmiya G. Laja is a Quality Improvement (QI) Specialist at the Primary Health Care Corporation
(PHCC), Qatar, with a clinical background and nearly twenty years of experience in healthcare quality, patient safety, and system-level improvement in primary care.

She holds a PhD in Nursing Education (Leadership and Management) and is actively involved in advancing people-centered, data-driven improvement across health systems. Since 2015, Dr. Laja has led the design and implementation of PHCC’s corporate QI training program, strengthening organizational capability through a structured improvement framework. Her work has supported the training of approximately 4,000 staff and the empowerment of QI focal points across 31 health centers, building sustained improvement capacity at scale. This training program has been a key enabler of organizational improvement efforts, contributing to over 700 completed and ongoing QI projects and supporting the
development of a strong and sustainable QI culture. Several PHCC improvement initiatives have been recognized as leading practices by the Healthcare Standards Organization (HSO), Canada.

Dr. Laja is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, certified Quality Improvement Trainer, and Fellow of the International Society for Quality in Health Care (FISQua). She coaches multidisciplinary teams in applying structured improvement methods to enhance workflows, care coordination, and patient and staff experience, and supports accreditation readiness and digital transformation through embedded QI governance.

Her scholarly work focuses on applied QI research, including a mixed-methods evaluation of the Quality Improvement model in primary care and the dissemination of successful initiatives at national and international forums.