Fireside Chat: Of Walls, Moats, and Ceilings: Reconceiving HHR in the Era of Quality Improvement
Brief Description:
Our understanding of what creates quality health care has changed. It is not enough to have highly competent people steeped in their disciplines’ knowledge base. Professionals have to work effectively in teams. The organization of work is at least as important as the qualifications of people doing the work. The knowledge acquired in formal training programs becomes less important over time; lifelong learning is an imperative. System competence is different from individual competence. Patient-centredness signals the final demise of the old order. But if health care is to achieve its ambitions, there must be fundamental changes in how we educate, apprentice, certify, support, and integrate health human resources.
This presentation and discussion will highlight the challenges inherent in aligning human resource policies and practices with the precepts of patient-centred care dedicated to continuous quality improvement.
Meeting these challenges will involve questioning historical assumptions, developing strategies for optimizing scopes of practice, and creating the conditions under which team-based care can flourish.
Presenter:
Steven Lewis is a health policy and research consultant based in Saskatoon, and Adjunct Professor of Health Policy at Simon Fraser University. Prior to resuming a full-time consulting practice he headed a health research granting agency and spent 7 years as CEO of the Health Services Utilization and Research Commission in Saskatchewan. He has served on various boards and committees, including the Governing Council of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Saskatchewan Health Quality Council, the Health Council of Canada, and the editorial boards of several journals, including Open Medicine. Steven writes frequently on improving quality, equity, and performance in health care, and is the moderator of the M.A.S.H. blog – Meaningful Analogies in Sports and Health
FIRESIDE CHAT:
Download the Power Point Presentation (PDF 1.02MB)