Dr. Sarah Pirani

Dr. Sarah Pirani is an assistant teaching Professor at UVIC, primarily teaching in the Nurse Practitioner program. Her areas of expertise include primary care & internal medicine, neurosurgery, psychiatry & mental health, and wound care. Before joining UVIC, she served as an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii, mainly teaching in the Nurse Practitioner & Doctor of Nursing Practice (NP/DNP) combined program. As the vice-chair of the DNP curriculum committee, she successfully co-led a major DNP curriculum revision. She also spearheaded the development and implementation of several simulations in the NP/DNP program. Using creative and engaging teaching strategies to promote student learning and success is one of her passions. She created the “Learn with your Aging Patients” series in which students used the reverse case study method to construct and manage their patients, from pediatrics to geriatrics.

She taught at McMaster University from 2014 to 2019 in various settings—including classrooms, clinical environments, and simulation labs. Dr. Pirani also served as an internal medicine resident physician for the Shanghai East Hospital after graduating from Tongji University Medical School in Shanghai, China. She later transitioned her career to nursing and earned her BScN from Western University, MSc & NP from McMaster University, and DNP degree from Chatham University in Pennsylvania, USA. In addition, Dr. Pirani obtained the Higher Education Teaching Certificate from Harvard University as well.

Her teaching philosophy is inquiry-based and student-centered. Dr. Pirani believes that teaching needs to be student-centered in order to be effective and that students need to be equal partners in the learning process. She strives to create a safe and welcoming environment that accommodates a variety of learning styles. She helps students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills and enhance their ability to collaborate and communicate effectively with others. Her goals include helping students learn the material at hand and fostering their intellectual curiosity and spirit for life-long learning. She often asks thought-provoking questions to help students transition from simply memorizing the content to thinking critically and connecting the concepts to everyday examples.