Congratulations to the 2018 President's Awards for Leadership recipients
Caring, compassionate and dedicated to everything they do: this year’s Presidents Award recipients were honoured for their efforts in advancing St. Joseph’s roles and values at a recent ceremony.
The President's Awards recognize individual’s teams and community partners who have made significant contributions to the mission, culture, collaboration, quality of care and performance of St. Joseph’s.
The awards include the Aspiring Leader Award, Kathy Burrill Leadership in Mission Award, Sandra Letton Quality Award, and the Community Partner of Distinction Award. Meet the 2018 recipients.
The Aspiring Leader Award
The Aspiring Leader Award recognizes an individual who shows significant skill development, demonstrates leadership qualities and has recently risen to a leadership challenge. This year’s recipient is Dr. Maya Roth, a psychologist in the Operational Stress Injury (OSI) Clinic at Parkwood Institute.
A widely respected researcher within the field of military and Veteran mental health, Dr. Roth is described by colleagues as a dedicated and process-oriented individual who consistently seeks to improve OSI services. She has been instrumental in expanding OSI Clinic services into the Greater Toronto Area, significantly reducing the travel time for many patients receiving treatment for operational stress injuries, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Dr. Roth consistently puts research into clinical practice. After numerous clinical research studies demonstrating the effectiveness of prolonged exposure (PE) therapy for PTSD, Dr. Roth not only sought out training in PE, but became a trainer of the psychotherapy herself. She is now able to train and supervise other clinicians interested in practicing this evidence-based treatment.
In all areas of her work, Dr. Roth has the interests of veterans, members of the Canadian Armed Forces and Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and family members at heart. She also makes time to provide clinical consultation to her colleagues and share her expansive knowledge and expertise with them team.
The Kathy Burrill Leadership in Mission Award
The Kathy Burrill Leadership in Mission Award celebrates efforts to exemplify and advance St. Joseph’s roles and values as a Catholic, academic and community-oriented health care provider. Recipients are effective change agents and forward-thinkers – the type of leader others want to follow or work in partnership with. This year’s award goes to Dr. Susan McNair, a family physician at St. Joseph’s Family Medical and Dental Centre and Medical Director of the Regional Sexual and Domestic Violence Treatment Program at St. Joseph’s Hospital.
Dr. McNair works passionately to advocate for the collaborative, patient-centred care in a safe environment for those who have experienced domestic violence and/or sexual assault - guided by the Catholic mission and values of St. Joseph’s. Nurses often comment that Dr. McNair is always available, day or night, and willing to support whenever needed. She generously shares her expertise, providing education to community agencies and health care professionals across disciplines, and participating in provincial initiatives to ensure this population is served.
With her strong sense of community and dedication to building trusting and meaningful relationships, Dr. McNair has been instrumental in forging a vital and groundbreaking partnership with the London Police Services to support victims of human trafficking.
Dr. McNair’s promotes her mission and service leadership role wherever she goes. During a stay at her cabin, she established a trusting relationship with surrounding community members. A couple from this community shared their experience of a family member who had been assaulted with Dr. McNair’s and asked for her guidance. A colleague of McNair’s describes how “the couple arranged for Susan to come and speak to their community. To her surprise, she was greeted by 55 men and 16 women. There were many examples of sexual abuse and domestic violence issues, which Susan addressed. She spent hours providing direction and answering questions.”
The Sandra Letton Quality Award
The Sandra Letton Quality Award recognizes a St. Joseph’s team who has made an outstanding contribution toward improvement in quality patient care. The recipient raises the level of awareness and shares examples of their excellent work within our organization and far beyond. Most importantly, this award recipient contributes to an overall culture of quality at St. Joseph’s. This year’s recipient is the Zero Suicide Initiative Team.
Zero Suicide is a system-wide quality improvement initiative that sets a bold goal of reducing suicides and attempted suicides by wrapping care around the individual so that fewer people fall through gaps in their care journey. In this way, Zero Suicide helps to create safe bridges in transitions of care.
The team outlines processes for determining and assessing suicide risk, risk protocol formulation, and evidence-based follow-up and treatment, which has been successfully implemented within the adult ambulatory and concurrent disorders services at Parkwood Institute Mental Health Care Building, and and in the first five inpatient mental health care programs.
The Zero Suicide Team works tirelessly to engage staff as well as patients and families in this important initiative. Comprehensive training and education has been provided to staff and physicians involved, which has significantly contributed to the team's success.
The Community Partner of Distinction Award
The Community Partner of Distinction Award honours a group or organization that makes a significant contribution to the health and well-being of individuals and our community as a whole. They have stepped up to collaborate with us – and we with them – an effort to improve patient care outcomes and the overall patient care experience. This year’s recipient is the Middlesex-London Health Unit’s Outreach Team.
The Middlesex-London Health Unit (MLHU) Outreach Team is an exemplary community partner of St. Joseph’s. This kind, caring and compassionate group goes above and beyond to support our patients.
In 2016, the MLHU declared an outbreak of HIV andhepatitis C among intravenous drug users in London. Thispopulation is often homeless, marginalized and struggle with addiction andmental health issues. In June 2017, MLHU created an outreach team in response to theoutbreak - the only team of its kindin Ontario.
As St. Joseph’s Infectious Diseases Care Program (IDCP) has expanded clinic work within London, the Outreach Team works collaboratively to locate patients, provide transportation toclinicappointments and attends the appointments with patients. Thisteam uses creative and unique ways to connect with patients through social media, email and text messages. In urgent situations where IDCP has needed to reach patients for various health reasons but has no way to contact them directly, the Outreach Team has stepped up to locate, relay a message and support the patient.
St. Joseph's sincerely thanks and appreciates the MLHU Outreach team for their continued support, compassion and collaborative partnership, which truly makes a lasting difference in the lives of patients.