Canada West Health Leaders Conference

• Create an environment where health leaders get hands on practical learning to apply in their organizations and further their careers and personal growth;
• Offer interactive, unique and innovative learning experiences;
• Offer mentorship opportunities and create an environment that promotes open dialogue and making connections with fellow health leaders;
• Facilitate the exchange of ideas and collaborations on issues of common interest and innovative approaches to address health leadership challenges; and
• Address and debate the health leadership challenges surrounding justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.

• Build strong networks as well as an improved sense of community and support from other leaders facing similar challenges;
• Exchange knowledge on leading practices, tools, and ideas that can be implemented into their work settings;
• Identify champions of healthcare innovations that will influence improvements in the areas of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion; and
• Engage with other leaders to explore traits of effective and innovative leadership to foster efficient solutions to manage today’s complex times.
• Identify champions of healthcare innovations that will influence improvements in the areas of justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, indigenous health, and green healthcare; and
• Engage with other leaders to explore traits of effective and innovative leadership to foster efficient solutions to manage today’s complex times.

Registration

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Program-at-a-glance

Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Thursday, October 26, 2023

* Program is subject to change without notice

Plenary Sessions

Mental health through dynamic events: Best practices for your own, your team’s and your organization’s mental health

In an era of transformational change, professionals and workplace culture are impacted in multiple ways. Some impacts are an acceleration of pre-existing trends, and some are new. But one thing is clear – many of these changes are far-reaching.

In this presentation, Dr. Pelletier brings together her clinical work as a practicing work psychologist with current research to challenge your assumptions and help you understand the actions you can take to bring your best and support individuals, teams and the organization.

More importantly, she highlights how you can manage these changes and turn them into an advantage. By approaching this moment in time with curiosity, agility and renewed energy and purpose, we can not only adapt to change, we can thrive.

• Understand the links between your mindset, resilience and mental health.
• Distinguish what factors contribute to mental agility and health, as well as to fatigue and burnout.
• Reconstruct your strategic plan for the power of resilience based on strategies that work.

1. Provides expertise for boosting performance. Marie-Hélène shares what psychologists know but other professionals and business people may not. She has a robust understanding of the intersection between business success and strong workplace mental health. She led workplace mental health strategy in senior leadership roles at several companies, including Sun Life, one of the world’s leading financial institutions.
2. Builds leadership and organizational resilience. Through her speaking engagements and workshops, Marie-Hélène provides business leaders with concrete steps to prevent fatigue and burnout – and gain energy, even in tough times. She can help your leaders and their team members shift perspectives and regain and retain their passion.
3. Helps your organization manage change. Marie-Hélène provides business leaders and their team members with the psychological tools needed to adapt to, and embrace, transformational change. She equips them to respond quickly, make good decisions, and maintain stamina for ongoing productivity.
4. Combines style with substance. Marie-Hélène is a dynamic speaker and workshop facilitator. She has an engaging style, exhilarating energy, and a warm sense of humour. With this relatable approach, she brings the latest research and proven best practices to her talks, inspiring participants to take action and get results.

Retention in action – Towards safety and quality

Innovative and impactful health workforce retention initiatives are underway across Canada. It is essential that action occurs to support both the workforce and patients for safe and high quality of care. Healthcare Excellence Canada has found and continues to seek, and promote, these innovative leaders and innovations.

This session will support leaders by sharing insights and strategies to inspire further action and innovation. Healthcare Excellence Canada will also share learnings and resources from its joint work with the Canadian Institute for Health Information, and HEC’s Health Workforce Innovation Challenge.

Speakers

Ms. Melanie MacKinnon – Executive Director; Ongomiizwin Health Services

Ms. MacKinnon is a nationally recognized Indigenous nurse leader (Bachelor of Nursing/96), published author and sought after national/international speaker on cultural safety, recruitment and retention best practices, and organizational design.

She is a proud member of Misipawistik Cree Nation (Grand Rapids) with paternal roots in Pimicikamak Cree Nation (Cross Lake) and she grew up in Wabowden, Manitoba. Throughout her career, she has served in many distinct roles within the health sector.

She is currently the Head and Executive Director, Indigenous Institute of Health and Healing (Ongomiizwin), Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Manitoba. As a healthcare executive and advocate, her work has informed regional and national policy shifts and generated new program mandates that look to improve and protect the health and well-being of the communities she serves.

Prior to joining the University of Manitoba, Ms. Mackinnon owned and operated Medicine Creek Solutions, a national healthcare consulting practice. Through her business and clinical operations acumen, she has generated more than ½ a Billion dollars for innovative health services, programs, and capital projects with First Nation, Metis, and Inuit beneficiaries.

During the Covid-19 Pandemic, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs appointed Ms. Mackinnon their regional health lead and through her co-leadership with multiple First Nation and mainstream health organizations, they created a crisis response the rest of the country learned from and reflected as per their unique circumstances. In that time, Ms. Mackinnon worked directly with members from the Royal Canadian Armed Forcesin the testing and community outbreak response as well as the vaccine roll-out, of which Manitoba First Nations had the highest vaccine uptake in the country. This work has been publicly honoured by the Manitoba Chiefs in Assembly in 2023.

Other notable recognitions for excellence in service include; National Indspire Award - Health recipient (2022), WXN Most Powerful - Top 100 Women in Canada (2021), the Circle of Excellence Award, First Nations and Inuit Health Branch (Manitoba Region), Indigenous Services Canada (2021), the Co-Game Star National Hockey League (NHL) Healthcare Heroes Award (Winnipeg Jets - 2021), the co- recipient of the Dr. and Mrs. Ralph Campbell Outreach Award (2021 -The university’s premier award in recognition of outstanding outreach activities by a member of the university), and the recipient of the Frontier School Division Life-Time Achievement Award (2021).

Others to be confirmed

Moderator

Colleen Ferris – Director of Innovations and Strategic Development, Healthcare Excellence Canada

Colleen is passionate about making a difference in the healthcare system. She is currently the Director of Innovations and Strategic Development at Healthcare Excellence Canada (HEC). Colleen has practiced nursing clinically in addition to working in health program administration and policy environments over the past 15 plus years with different organizations including the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada, the Canadian Nurses Association, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Prior to joining HEC, she held several senior level positions at CIHR including team lead of the Strategy for Patient Oriented Research at its inception and Director General of Governance. Colleen’s clinical, academic and real-world policy experience drives her ability to bring about innovative and integrated changes in complex environments.  Colleen holds a Master of Health Studies and Bachelor of Science in Nursing.

Three reasons why care is not enough to support health leaders… and what to do about it

Caring for health care leaders requires empathy and compassion, but these are not enough. Without effective leadership training, support, and integration organization-wide, leaders cannot optimize the remarkable opportunities to create systems transformation that are before us, as well as to embrace new technologies and innovations.

Dr. Jaason Geerts – Director, Research and Leadership Development, Canadian College of Health Leaders | Honorary Visiting Fellow, The Bayes Business School, University of London (UK)

Dr. Jaason Geerts is the Director of Research and Leadership Development at the Canadian College of Health Leaders (CCHL) and a former Honorary Visiting Fellow at The Bayes Business School, University of London in the UK.

Jaason completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge on leadership for professionals after a teaching degree and two Master’s at the University of Toronto and Cambridge respectively.

In addition to a recent TEDx Talk and having contributed to a recently published business book, Credible: the power of expert leaders, his work has been featured in international peer-reviewed journals, the Globe and Mail, CBC national news, CTV news, and local radio, as well as globally through the International Hospital Federation and British Medical Journal journals.

The model of leadership in a crisis that Jaason created is the theoretical foundation for a recent successful CIHR research grant valued at $450,000 and he participated as an invited advisor for a World Health Organization symposium on health system recovery.

Jaason is also a program director and instructor at the Telfer School of Management (University of Ottawa) and the Schulich School of Business (York University, Toronto).

Jaason is also a qualified teacher and was nominated for the Toronto Star’s Teacher of the Year.

CARING IS EVERYTHING™️: Getting to the heart of leadership in health care

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed long-standing structural and systemic challenges in health care, resulting in record levels of stress, burnout, and turnover among physicians, nurses, and personal support workers. For some, it takes courage to leave health care. And for those who have the courage to stay, we must remember to focus on what we can create as we move forward together: caring cultures.

• Be inspired with a shared recognition and commitment to create cultures of retention and well-being - through the power of caring.

• Understand the balance required between self-care and caring for each other – and how to ensure that we live a more integrated, sustainable life within our leadership.
• Leave with inspired confidence and practical tools for creating caring cultures in the ever-demanding health care world.

David Irvine – The Authentic Leader's Navigator

David Irvine is a world-renowned speaker, author, and trusted leadership advisor.

With more than forty years of experience as a family therapist, workshop facilitator, lecturer, and adviser to executives, David has dedicated his life to helping leaders – at all levels of organizations and in all walks of life – bring their best selves to whatever they do. With advanced degrees in human development, science, and social work, David takes a unique approach to leadership development that helps leaders amplify their impact by discovering and deepening their authentic presence.

Thousands of people attend David’s leadership development programs every year. His clients are from public, private, educational, not-for-profit, family business, and entrepreneurial sectors. He has presented to health care organizations across Canada and the US.

Together with his team, David has created the Authentic Leadership Academy, a one-of-a-kind program that creates community and helps leaders achieve new levels of success by living integrated lives.

David is the bestselling author of seven books, with over 300,000 copies sold worldwide, and hosts the podcast The Other Everest.

He serves on board of the Wayfinders Wellness Society, an organization that provides a safe space for military and first responders suffering from PTSD.

As a former nationally ranked distance runner, David maintains an active lifestyle of yoga, boxing, and hiking. David lives with his wife in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near Cochrane, Alberta. For more, visit www.davidirvine.com

9. Global connectivity: Leadership perspectives on equity, inclusion, and social justice

Over the past two years I, as CEO of LEADS Global have been working with health leadership individuals and organizations from multiple countries. Our many conversations have reflected common challenges during and post-COVID. Not just in Canada, but world-wide, health leadership has been forced to respond to heightened concerns about equity, inclusion, and social justice, both in the treatment of citizens during the pandemic, but also within health organizations dedicated to serving societal needs. Issues faced in Canada, such as violence in the workplace, difficulty in responding to the health needs by marginalized populations, and growing discrimination of various minority groups have also emerged in many international jurisdictions. In this session the presenter will share perspectives from representatives of health systems in select countries (e.g., UK, India, USA, Israel, Denmark, Aruba and the Netherlands, South Africa, Chile). Perspectives from different health leaders will describe those situations and the responses employed to address them. In many instances, that response has required major self-reflection and behavioural self-correction, i.e., an attitude change to the practice of leadership, that is significant, and in some cases, profound.

After hearing these stories, session participants will engage in a dialogue amongst themselves about the similarity of those experiences with their own. It is intended that seeing such issues in a global context will help individuals dealing with those issues here at home can respond with a greater sense of calm and personal resilience.

Speaker

Graham Dickson - Professor Emeritus, Royal Roads University and CEO, LEADS Global

10. Coaches’ Corner

11. Wellness through safety: Leading a thriving workforce through physical, psychological, cultural safety

12. Designing for a caring culture

A sustainable, safe and healthy work environment – one that fosters a caring culture – must be anchored in the design of the environment itself.

Sue Owen and Jeanette Edwards were engaged by architecture firm ft3 to host stakeholder engagement in support of the design of the new Portage la Prairie Hospital. Their work – listening to and learning from patients and residents – took them more deeply into the Portage la Prairie Community and included site visits to First Nations Reserves.

Learning Objectives & Leadership Lessons Learned

This 90-minute workshop is aimed at:

• Sharing lessons learned from the design of the new Portage la Prairie Hospital, including:
  • identifying key patient types, how these types experience the hospital and the impact this has on patient outcomes
  • how collaboration with Indigenous Leaders was designed to promote better facility design and ultimately better patient outcomes
• Coaching on the tools and techniques, including patient personas used to identify patient types in a manner that improves health outcomes

Outcomes

• Enhanced understanding on how facility design impacts patient outcomes
• Tools and techniques used to stratify patient types
• Novel approaches to stakeholder engagement in support of facility design

Speakers

Sue Owen - CEO, Impreza Consulting
Jeanette Edwards - Retired (former Lead for Indigenous Services, Shared Health Manitoba)

13. Campfire sessions – Lead self

Reviving an exhausted brain: A leads-self journey of depletion, discovery, and recovery

Sixteen months into the pandemic, the previously unimaginable happened to me. I went on medical leave for “burn out”. Several days in, feeling disconnected and alone, I asked myself… “so now what”?  Exactly how does one recover a brain battered by sustained insomnia and unrelenting, continuous multi-tasking and information overload to keep pace with a pandemic? The only place to turn was inward to create a mission critical self-directed learning plan to: 1) restore a regular sleep cycle, 2) regain the ability to focus and manage cognitive capacity, and 3) ensure it was sustainable.

After leading health research for over three decades, it was time to turn the power of evidence-based care onto myself. Recovery was not rest; it was work. Deep self-reflection, finding motivation through the fog of exhaustion, structured learning and “knowledge translation” onto myself, worked. New evidence-based professional and personal wellness habits now align with the way a human brain was designed to function, not in opposition to it.

This campfire presentation will provide learning and interactive dialogue around personal and system accountability for brain fitness and recovery. Resources and tools to support brain health for leaders in our complex and demanding healthcare environment will be provided.

Speakers

Ainsley Young - Executive Director, SWITCH BC
Cindy Trytten, CHE - Director, Research, Island Health

Burnout - Wildfire to flame

The pandemic has exacerbated workplace stress and placed additional pressure on healthcare leaders and our workforce.  Listen and hear our people’s voices in a short AI video from guerilla interviews with our staff. Appreciate the leadership journey that highlighted the importance of acknowledgement and measurement of burnout to our healthcare workforce. The outcomes supported our understanding in how burnout feels to individuals and identified organizational behaviors that contribute to burnout for employees, physicians, and leaders. Clarity on organizational vision, leadership, role definition and 'making it personal’ is important in mitigating burnout. Engage with us as we advance all our learning in a series of short-facilitated activities.

Small changes make a big difference and addressing ‘pebbles in shoes’ takes a small investment of time with significant outcomes. We will share some of the groundswell of resulting system changes from small local pockets of uptake at the unit or program level, a shift in mindset about innovative possibilities, to uptake by senior leadership as priority action. Leave the campfire with critical reflection on why ‘Our People for Our Patients’ is the refreshing new perspective to the traditional ‘Patient First’ approach. Feel the call to action!

Speakers

Carolyn Trumper, CHE - Executive Director Central Zone AHS
Emma Folz, CHE - Executive Director PLC, Calgary Zone AHS

14. Examining two psychosocial factors for workers in healthcare and long-term care

The Mental Health Commission of Canada has released new research about how psychological self-care and protection from moral distress are essential to improve the well-being of healthcare workers, and to enhance the quality of care they provide to people they care for. For people working in healthcare, the many challenges to being well at work have increased dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, with higher rates of burnout and more people than ever thinking of leaving the profession.

These two unique factors from the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace will be explored in connection to the LEADS in a Caring Environment Framework, specifically in the domains of Lead Self, Engage Others, and Achieve Results.

During this workshop, participants will learn what barriers and facilitators support psychological self-care and protection from moral distress for healthcare workers, with a special focus on those working in long-term care. Participating in this workshop will enable health-care leaders to take on the issues impacting the sector’s recruitment and retention of staff, their health and safety, and most critically, their ability to provide quality care to some of our most vulnerable citizens.

Speakers

Kam Tello - Program Manager, Mental Health Commission of Canada
Laura Mullaly - Manager, Knowledge Mobilization, Mental Health Advancement, Mental Health Commission of Canada
Dr. Colleen Grady - Associate Professor/Researcher, Queen's University

15. Campfire sessions – Middle managers

Moving from a culture of caring to a covid culture and back

In an ongoing longitudinal study on the impact the pandemic has had—and is still having—on the mental health and well-being of healthcare professionals, a recurrent theme of incivility has emerged. Indeed, many of the study respondents used the term “covid culture” to summarize how rudeness and signs of disrespect and hostility by patients and their families and even co-workers now permeate hospitals and healthcare facilities. They related experiencing a host of negative health consequences they attributed to the growing incivility such as tension headaches, panic attacks, insomnia, family discord, and depression. Consequently, many reported higher absenteeism and actively seeking job changes that were at least in part related to the incivility. The study has also revealed that management’s attempts at addressing workplace incivility, such as through posting of signs in patient waiting rooms, have been largely ineffective and that human resource initiatives implemented to mitigate the negative impact of workplace incivility on healthcare professionals fall short. This interactive discussion will seek to identify meaningful ways to transition back to a culture of civility in healthcare. The presentation would be aimed towards middle managers/supervisors and leadership.

Speakers

Frances Jorgensen - Professor, Royal Roads University
Adelle Bish - Associate Professor, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University

Exploring adaptive leadership for frontline professionals in an acute care setting 

Complexity Leadership Theory (CLT) positions ‘leadership’ as a collective entity that is shared among all levels within an organization. CLT argues that frontline staff, be equipped to engage in adaptive leadership and be empowered to challenge the status quo as this is essential to driving a culture of innovation. There is currently a paucity of literature to inform how best to foster leadership skill development in frontline staff in the acute care setting. This presentation will review proposed critical leadership research led by a follower at a major teaching hospital. This prospective qualitative pilot study will utilize an action-based research methodology, informed by CLT to design and implement a leadership skills development program. Self-awareness, self-reflection, and the exploration of a diversity of perspectives will be examined through coaching, team learning and storytelling. The purpose of this session is to explore the application of adaptive leadership, a component of CLT, on informing leadership skill development in frontline staff in the acute care setting.  This session, through a facilitated campfire approach, will encourage participants to share stories, thoughts and experiences on the essential leadership skills required for frontline staff in the acute care setting and examine how CLT and adaptive leadership can be used to inform a mentorship framework aimed at fostering leadership development in frontline staff.

Speaker

Michelle Smart - Staff Physiotherapist at LHSC PT BSc.

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