Quarterly - Trillium Health Centre

Quarterly
a newsletter from the President and CEO – PAGE 2
Shift
a column of news briefs about changes,
challenges, people and projects
Spotlight on
Breakfast with the President
Coffee, muffins and conversation are
on the agenda once a month when
Janet Davidson invites 12 to 15 randomly
selected Trillium employees,
physicians and volunteers to join her
for breakfast.
After providing a “where we are now”
update, Janet invites guests to discuss
whatever is on their minds.
“I wanted an opportunity to spend
time with employees, physicians and
volunteers who work throughout the
hospital – to get to know them better
as people and to hear about their daily
work, their ideas, achievements and,
yes, their con cerns, first hand. I appreciate
how frank the conversations have
been,” she says. “I also hope they get
to know each other a little better.” ◆
Celebrating our Volunteers
They are 1,000 people strong and last
year they donated more than 100,000
hours of their time to support Trillium
Health Centre programs. They are
Trillium's volunteers, honoured April 22
at a Recognition Dinner in conjunction
with National Volunteer Week.
Ann Mackay, who has served Trillium
and its predecessor Queensway
General Hospital for 55 years, received
a special award from President and
CEO Janet Davidson and Mississauga’s
Mayor Hazel McCallion. Barbara Peden,
Margot Sabow and Barbara Patterson
were also recognized for their 50, 45
and 40 years of service respectively.
Other special awards included the
Student Volunteer of the Year Award,
presented to Pereya Kulasegaram.
At the dinner, fellow volunteer and
Board Chair Anne Sado, told guests that
Trillium Health Centre – and its two
predecessors – was founded on the
strength and dedication of volunteers.
“They started from scratch,” she said.
“Without their efforts, then and
now, Trillium would not be what it is
today.” ◆
Big Dots
Trillium Health Centre follows the dots.
“Big Dots” are a short-cut to better
performance management: If you want
to accurately and objectively assess
how an organization is doing in terms
of its vision, progress is measured in
numbers.
Trillium monitors its performance –
hand hygiene compliance rates or central
line infection rates, for example
– by calculating percentages. Those
percentages are included in charts and
become points on a line, month over
month, year over year. These points or
“dots” are reliable indicators of actual
performance compared to the targets
we have set for ourselves or have been
set for us.
In the area of Quality and Patient Safety,
the Big Dots are focused on hospital
standardized mortality ratio, emergency
department wait times, pressure
ulcers and patient satisfaction. ◆
Seniors Symposium
“Transforming Seniors Care: Within,
Between and Beyond”, a conference
focused on moving from ideas to
action in health care for older adults,
will take place June 23 and 24 at
Trillium Health Centre.
Seniors health and wellness is a key
longer-term strategy at Trillium.
“We’re committed to exploring opportunities
to advance excellence in
seniors’ health,” says Patti Cochrane,
Vice President, Patient Services &
Quality and Chief Nursing Officer.
A keynote speaker for the event, which
is expected to draw more than 100
participants from health care, educational
and community service organizations
in the Mississauga Halton area,
will be Dennis Kodner, Ph.D., a noted
gerontologist and eldercare innovator.
Dr. Barbara Clive, a geriatrician at The
Credit Valley Hospital and Geriatric
Lead for the Mississauga Halton LHIN,
will also speak. ◆
Positive Deviance
Solutions to a community’s most
difficult problems are often
hidden in plain sight.
That’s the underlying philosophy of Positive
Deviance (PD), a change methodology pioneered
in Vietnam nearly two decades ago in a last-ditch
effort to combat the malnutrition that afflicted
65 per cent of the country’s children. Today, PD is
being put to work in the service of reducing rates
of hospital-acquired infections among patients.
In the 1990s, Tufts University nutrition professor,
Marian Zeitlin documented the existence of
“Positive Deviant” children in poor communities
– children who were better nourished than others.
Despite being limited to the same resources as
others in the community, the children fared better
because of their parents’ exceptional behaviour
and practices. Dr. Zeitlin’s work led to a sustained
65 to 80% reduction in childhood mal nutrition
in Vietnamese communities and, in the years
since, the approach has significantly reduced
childhood malnutrition in 41 countries around
the world. PD has also been used to reduce high
school drop out rates, teen-aged pregnancies and
prevent HIV/AIDS in sex workers.
Now, Trillium is one of six Canadian sites for
the Canadian PD Project, an 18-month pilot
designed to determine if Positive Deviance
can help Canadian hospitals tackle C-diff and
MRSAs. The Trillium PD team is led by Louise
Koyanagi, lead nurse at Trillium’s Betty Wallace
Women’s Health Centre.
“Positive Deviance is a practical, strength-based
approach that looks not at what’s going wrong
but at what’s going right. It leads us to think about
existing resources in a different way. Individuals
and units will be able to overcome the problem of
infection rates without special resources,” Louise
Koyanagi says.
“The purpose of the project is not to give people
ideas but rather to allow them to discover their own
existing Positive Deviant practices and apply them
universally.”
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