Teaching and Training
Empowering staff and inspiring excellence at St. Paul’s Foundation
At St. Paul’s Foundation, our commitment to health care extends beyond patient care – it’s about cultivating an environment of empowerment and excellence that transcends all aspects of our organization.
As a leading teaching hospital in Canada, St. Paul’s is not just a hospital; it’s a hub of innovation, education, and compassionate care, and that applies to all areas of care, including our own community of medical professionals. Through programs like the following, St. Paul’s unites our health care professionals under a shared commitment to deliver exceptional care to patients. At the same time, these initiatives also invest in the frontline nurses and allied health professionals who drive innovation and excellence.
- The Centre for Research Training for Nurses and Allied Health Professionals (CREST)
- The new patient partner position
- Quality Improvement (QI) Challenge
- Value-Based Health Care (VBHC)
Discover stories of resilience, determination, and impact as you explore the profound effect these initiatives have on staff training and professional practice; these are more than an investment in St. Paul’s – it’s an investment in the future of health care and the next generation of medical professionals at a top-tier teaching hospital.
You can play a pivotal role in empowering our dedicated staff and inspiring excellence in their professional practice.
The CREST initiative at St. Paul’s Foundation
At St. Paul’s, we recognize that fostering a culture of innovation requires investing in the growth and professional development of our nurses and allied health professionals. Within Providence Health Care (PHC), a dedicated team of nurses and allied health professionals is diligently pursuing advanced studies, seeking to bring leading-edge knowledge into the core of clinical care at St. Paul’s. However, they face a critical gap – a lack of dedicated infrastructure to cultivate their research skills and apply their insights into practice. Cue CREST, a first in Canada initiative that will address this gap by offering a supportive environment, sustained funding, and mentorship to become the catalyst for transforming academic skills into tangible advancements in patient care.
Elevating patient care
“Like so many nurses I am driven to generate and apply evidence in clinical practice, but crave formal training and mentorship to make it happen, CREST presents an important opportunity for clinicians like me to explore meaningful research ideas that will directly impact clinical processes, patient care and clinical outcomes,”—Michelle Carter, clinical nurse specialist at St. Paul’s Hospital.
CREST is a trailblazer in addressing the needs of health care workers and transforming staff into clinician-scientists, leading the way in innovative, transformative, and evidence-informed health care practices, setting a new standard of health care excellence continually shaped and refined by the latest research findings. And at the end of the day, the benefits are felt most by patients – the driving force behind our promise.
Why training professional practice matters in a teaching hospital
A teaching hospital is the fusion of education and health care, where passionate frontline workers push the boundaries of what excellence in patient care can mean. CREST is the missing piece that combines the existing skills of our competent and qualified staff with the tools they need to thrive and make health care changes and improvements. CREST ensures our health professionals have the opportunity to seamlessly integrate the latest evidence and research into their real-time care methodologies by providing them with the training, time, and mentorship to launch innovative health care strategies.
The benefits of intentionality in the relationship between education and practices not only enhances patient outcomes, but fortifies St. Paul’s as a teaching hospital, attracting and retaining top-tier professionals dedicated to advancing health care through research.
Whether they’re a nurse, a physiotherapist, a respiratory therapist, or a speech-language pathologist, these ambitious professionals will bring the patient experience into their research and use their research findings to provide excellence in patient care. And you can play an essential part in this inspiring commitment.
Bringing voices to the forefront with a patient partner
As a leading teaching hospital, our care is split between the needs of our patients and medical staff and. Recognizing the importance of patient voices in shaping their health care journeys, PHC is taking a bold step forward by introducing a visionary initiative that aims to amplify patient voices, ensuring that their needs are met and experiences are validated throughout their health care interactions.
Empowering patients through collaboration
No matter the duration or intensity of their hospital stay, patients yearn for a sense of empowerment in their health care journey. When patients believe their voices are heard and their needs acknowledged, they are more likely to actively participate in their treatment plans.
Through the creation of a patient partner, a salaried position who will collaborate with diverse patient populations, this initiative ensures patient voices are heard in all future decisions.
The role of the patient partner is to serve as a bridge between health care teams and patients, facilitating meaningful and effective engagement across projects, research, and policy development. With patient voices embedded in the decision-making process, our health care experience becomes personalized and attuned to the diverse needs of our patient community, ultimately resulting in improved care solutions for all involved.
Ensuring diversity and inclusivity in patient partnerships
At Providence Health Care, every effort is made to recruit patient and family partners who represent diverse backgrounds, including age, gender identity, cultural identity, socio-economic status, and more. This commitment to diversity ensures the patient voice is a true reflection of the diversity found within our community, and that all voices have the chance to be heard.
In all our education, training, and research endeavours, PHC is dedicated to integrating reconciliation into the core of our culture. This commitment is aimed at guaranteeing that our services, settings, staff, and research interactions with Indigenous Peoples are culturally safe. A crucial aspect of promoting Indigenous wellness and reconciliation (IWR) involves gaining a deep understanding of the experiences of Indigenous patients who seek care at our facilities. The role of patient partner will collaborate closely with the IWR team to actively seek Indigenous voices in patient engagement initiatives across the organization. The goal is to ensure that all patient engagement opportunities are conducted in a culturally safe manner, respecting and honouring the diverse perspectives of Indigenous individuals.
The new position will help PHC provide care that has been influenced and shaped by patient voices. You can have a direct impact on this transformative initiative.
Empowering staff through the Quality Improvement Challenge
Rooted in a dedication to excellence, St. Paul’s Foundation is on a constant journey of refining and enhancing our health care practices. The Quality Improvement (QI) Challenge is a testament to this dedication, and is a transformative initiative designed to elevate patient care, empower health care professionals, and foster innovation within PHC.
Addressing challenges from a patient’s perspective
In our continuous pursuit of excellence, the QI Challenge is at the core of PHC values, and is recognized as a powerful antidote to the real problem of staff burnout. QI empowers our health care providers to enact positive changes, contributing to the health and happiness of our staff, and the quality of care for our patients.
Since 2017, 30 people have successfully taken part in the QI Challenge. Together, they’ve completed 22 projects that have improved patient care, reduced errors, improved workflow, and increased staff and provider satisfaction.
The QI Challenge tackles the fundamental issue of improving services through a lens of compassion and efficacy. From patient experience surveys, safety event reports, and compliance assessments, we’ve analyzed what our patients value most when it comes to their experience with our health care system, and how we can best serve these challenges and needs. The QI Challenge empowers staff and service providers to address these challenges collaboratively, ensuring that patient needs and experiences are at the forefront of improvement initiatives.
For instance, Suzanne Fuller, program director of Outpatient Services and leader in Infection Prevention & Control and Risk Management, encouraged Leila Chinybayeva, an Infection Control nurse, to use QI methods to solve a difficult issue at PHC’s Renal Program.
Leila launched a project using formal QI methods to assess the magnitude of the problem behind infection rates in peritoneal dialysis drain boxes, implement solutions, and set new and stricter standards for the boxes’ maintenance. The project was a success in reducing the formation of biofilm as one of the factors preventing infections in patients suffering from kidney disease. The next step is to work on the sustainability of the protocol and spread it to other units in the Renal Program.
The Future: Five years of impact
Over the next five years, the QI team envisions a comprehensive evolution of the QI Challenge:
- Revamping and certification: Finalizing the revamping of the QI Challenge, incorporating essential elements like VBHC and Indigenous wellness and reconciliation. Certification for Continuing Medical Education credits is also on the agenda.
- Annual delivery: Ensuring the annual delivery of the QI Challenge, providing ongoing learning opportunities for staff and service providers.
- Patient, resident, and family involvement: Inviting patient, resident, and family partners as equal participants, enriching the training and improvement work.
- Financial support: Offering funding for QI projects, supporting participants in formal learning sessions, and providing resources to implement new ideas.
- Culminating events: Hosting events like the annual “Celebrating Quality and Patient Safety at PHC,” creating a platform for sharing improvement projects and acknowledging the journey toward high-quality care.
Indigenous wellness and reconciliation
St. Paul’s is committed to contributing to Truth and Reconciliation in all areas of care. In alignment with Indigenous Wellness and Reconciliation (IWR) principles, the QI Challenge learning material will incorporate crucial elements for engaging people in quality improvement. Collaboration with the IWR team ensures that the program addresses key themes and ideas identified in the PHC report on Indigenous-specific racism and discrimination.
“In addition to offering professional development, the QI Challenge helps create a workplace culture where all clinicians and staff feel they have a voice and an opportunity to improve patient care.”
—Agnes Black, UBC School of Nursing adjunct professor and director, Health Services & Clinical Research and Knowledge Translation, Professional Practice and Nursing at PHC
Bringing value-based health care to PHC
St. Paul’s Foundation is dedicated to elevating the quality, safety, and value of health care delivery through a value-based health care (VBHC) approach, a proven and efficient organizational model that prioritizes achieving health outcomes that matter most to patients while also understanding the cost of the whole care journey.
What is VBHC?
VBHC is not merely a health care strategy; it’s a paradigm shift. It involves organizing care around measuring and achieving health outcomes that matter most to patients. The approach emphasizes collaboration among teams of care providers and patients sharing similar medical needs.
By focusing on the patient-caregiver relationship, VBHC aims to make health care experiences less chaotic for patients and families, breaking down silos among health care teams in the process while providing cost efficiencies to care.
VBHC at St. Paul’s
To immerse health care workers in the principles and practices of VBHC, PHC is providing an opportunity for our medical professionals to gain expert-level experience and understanding through a partnership with the Value Institute for Health and Care at the University of Texas–Austin. This initiative offers medical professionals an unparalleled opportunity to gain expert-level experience through the Master of Science in Health Care Transformation program. This intense, one-year interactive degree program is designed for medical professionals seeking to hone or improve VBHC practices and share these practices across their organizations.
An expert perspective: Meet Dr. Jackson
Dr. Shannon Jackson, medical director of St. Paul’s Adult Bleeding Disorders Program and the lead for VBHC at PHC, sheds light on the significance of VBHC. Her firsthand experience in caring for a chronic and complex patient population highlights the impact of making decisions that truly align with patients’ long-term outcomes.
“We consider the patient over a continuum, not just when they show up today in the clinic or when they’re admitted to the hospital. We think about the trajectory of their care from the community and primary care and home all the way through and back. Most importantly we need to align and understand what health outcomes that matter to patients with what the care team is able to deliver.”—Shannon Jackson, medical director of St. Paul’s Adult Bleeding Disorders Program.
Today and in the future
Today, St. Paul’s stands not just as a teaching hospital, but as a beacon of innovation, education, and unwavering dedication to patient and staff well-being alike. Our future holds the promise of even greater heights. The pillars of training professional practice – empowering staff, quality improvement, Indigenous reconciliation, and VBHC – collectively form the foundation of our commitment to a healthier tomorrow. Discover how you can help shape the future of health care at St. Paul’s Hospital and throughout Providence Health Care by clicking the button below.