Qualitycast North

This week we’re returning to Northern Health’s C-Suite and interview Nicole Cross, Northern Health’s Vice President of Indigenous Health and Chief Planning and Quality Officer. In this treat of an episode, we cover a wide range of topics including her career journey from entry-level Indigenous Patient Liaison to the Northern Health’s Executive C-suite. Nicole explains her vision for engaging patients and communities in their own care and care system; how openness and transparency is the key to how the system learns and why quality should be embedded and not optional in our healthcare system, before finishing with a heart-warming account of how her early life experience in her home Nisga'a Village of Laxgalts'ap drives her motivation and work with the Executive team.

When those in short term police custody need acute medical care, getting them that care presents logistic problems often resulting in time consuming and labor-intensive visits to the local hospital emergency department with police escorts. This week’s guest is Dr. Michelle Brousson, a family physician in North Vancouver, who talks to us about her innovative solution for this complex problem providing the care these patients need without having to leave the police station, providing a win-win solution for everyone involved. During this episode Dr. Brousson provides us with a project masterclass on engaging and listening to stakeholders and delivering education in a meaningful way. 
This project was supported through the Shared Care Committee, a sister collaborative committee to the Specialist Services Committee. 
To contact someone about spreading this project to your community, access the link below.
Links:
Shared Care Resources
Specialist Services Committee - Spreading Quality Improvement

Taking on your first leadership role as a physician can be a daunting prospect. New physician leaders can feel ill-prepared and ill-equipped when thrust into these positions. But it turns out training and experience in Quality Improvement can help prepare new physician leaders as many of QI skills translate directly into leadership. Our guest today is Dr. Gurpreet Narang, a radiologist based at the University Hospital of Northern British Columbia in Prince George who busts some of the myths surrounding physician leadership and tells us how to avoid that “deer in the headlights” moment commonly encountered by newbie physician leaders in the healthcare arena.

Returning to the podcast is everyone’s favourite physician QI coach and social media maven Dr. Lawrence Yang. He’s a family doc, physician wellness advocate and QI coach but is probably most well well-known for his social media presence and legions of posted selfies with fellow Quality Improvers. In this interview we go deep as Lawrence explains the importance of connection and mutual support within the QI community as well as his own personal motivation behind his networking superpower. We also talk about self-compassion, the dangers of working in silos, generational attitudes to work and identifying as ‘whole people’.

Links: 

Kristin Neff and self-compassion

Specialist Services Committee Physician Quality Improvement Alum Hub

Health Data Coalition

It’s a problem which we read and hear about in the media on an all too regular basis. But violence and mental health is not only a problem on our city streets, it’s also an issue in our hospitals. This week’s guest is Northern psychiatrist Dr. Barb Kane. In this episode we talk about why violence and mental health is such a big problem, how it came about and her proposed Northern solution.

Links: Read about and sign the petition at change.org

Patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD) are some of the heaviest users of western healthcare resources and particularly emergency departments. Effective treatments for alcohol use disorder have recently become available but only a very small proportion of eligible AUD receive treatment. To talk about their excellent quality improvement work in identifying eligible AUD patients and directing them towards appropriate care from the emergency department, are our two guests today, Dr. Aron Zuidhof, Medical Director for Emergency Services in Interior Health and Dorrie Fasick, Transformational Lead for the Interior Health Emergency Services Network. They talk us through the groundbreaking, wrap-around, care-pathway for AUD they’ve helped develop and at the same time, offer a masterclass in spread and implementation of this initiative to all 28 facilities in their health region.

Links:

AUD in ED Work Flow FV
Help is Available
AUD Outpatient Prescription

British Columbia’s Physician Quality Improvement (PQI) program celebrates its 8th birthday this year. Since inception, this program has produced amazing improvement work some of which we’ve showcased on this podcast. PQI has also generated a culture shift towards quality amongst the physician community throughout the province. Our special guest today is Dr. Curt Smecher, aka “Papa QI”, the person responsible for PQIs original vision and first training cohort. In this episode, we talk to Curt about PQI’s humble beginnings, the progress and impact of the program to date and its exciting next phase. We also hear how redefining barriers as “speed bumps” and a thoughtful, incremental approach towards its goals, has produced the program’s impressive results.
Abbreviations used during this episode:
PQI – Physician Quality Improvement
SSC – Specialist Services Committee, a collaborative committee between the Doctors of BC and the British Columbian Ministry of Health
Ministry – BC Ministry of Health
Fraser – Fraser Health Authority
We love to hear from you, our listeners. Send us your feedback or ask us a question about healthcare quality improvement by emailing us at [email protected].

In this special “mic swap” episode, Lee Cameron and guest co-host Dr. Gurpreet Narang turn the tables on our regular co-host Shyr Chui to ask him about his journey into QI, some of his current projects and memorable highlights from over 20 years of QI work. Amongst other things, we touch on Whole System Quality, building strong QI teams, artificial intelligence and what gets him out of bed every morning.

Links:
IHI White paper on Whole System Quality (Juran’s Quality Trilogy)
Qualitystream North

Today’s guest is a giant and well-respected figure in British Columbian Emergency Medicine. In addition to his many research and quality improvement projects, Dr. Jim Christenson helped create the British Columbia Emergency Medicine Network improving the quality of emergency care across the province. But far from slowing down in retirement, he’s continued pioneering work, turning his attention to the rural, indigenous communities on the west coast of Vancouver Island. In this insightful and moving interview Dr. Christenson talks about the current state of healthcare in these remote communities, the challenges of addressing inequity, his personal motivation for this work and some of the incredible and heartwarming encounters he’s experienced on the way.

Links:
Northern Health PQI
E-mail us!

In the second part of our interview with Northern Rural Family Physician, Dr. Ray Markham, we discuss some of his leadership work supporting rural communities across the province through the Rural Coordination Centre of BC. We discuss how to build a provincial support network and how the constraints of geography and remoteness can be turned to advantage by fueling innovation to improve care “at the edge”.

Links:
Partnership Pentagram
RCCbc