Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital developed an innovative framework that fully integrates 17 family and youth leaders into its accreditation preparation process to drive its quality and safety improvements. The hospital established a formalized committee, the Family Leader Accreditation Group (FLAG), where staff and family leaders (FLs), partnered equally to meet, update and share quality and safety initiatives as part of the accreditation preparedness process. The Quality, Safety and Performance (QSP) team was driven to partner more deeply with clients and families to advance quality and safety.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: A pilot study was conducted to assess correspondence among measures of program characteristics (opportunities and intervention strategies) and youth experiences in a range of activity settings in a residential immersive life skills (RILS) program.
Method: Opportunities and intervention strategies were assessed in 18 activity settings in the 21-day program. On two occasions each, four youth completed a measure of experiences and took part in onsite interviews.
Purpose: To describe the creation and validation of six simulations concerned with effective listening and interpersonal communication in pediatric rehabilitation.
Methods And Findings: The simulations involved clinicians from various disciplines, were based on clinical scenarios related to client issues, and reflected core aspects of listening/communication. Each simulation had a key learning objective, thus focusing clinicians on specific listening skills.
Background: Well before the H1N1 influenza, health care organizations worldwide prepared for a pandemic of unpredictable impact. Planners anticipated the possibility of a pandemic involving high mortality, high health care demands, rates of absenteeism rising up to 20-30% among health care workers, rationing of health care, and extraordinary psychological stress.
Method: The intervention we describe emerged from the recognition that an expected influenza pandemic indicated a need to build resilience to maintain the health of individuals within the organization and to protect the capacity of the organization to respond to extraordinary demands.
Objective: We investigated the prevalence of childhood adversity among healthcare workers and if such experiences affect responses to adult life stress.
Methods: A secondary analysis was conducted of a 2003 study of 176 hospital-based healthcare workers, which surveyed lifetime traumatic events, recent life events, psychological distress, coping, social support, and days off work due to stress or illness.
Results: Sixty eight percent (95% CI 61.
We describe an evidence-based approach to enhancing the resilience of healthcare workers in preparation for an influenza pandemic, based on evidence about the stress associated with working in healthcare during the SARS outbreak. SARS was associated with significant long-term stress in healthcare workers, but not with increased mental illness. Reducing pandemic-related stress may best be accomplished through interventions designed to enhance resilience in psychologically healthy people.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoc Work Health Care
July 2007
The urban hospital workplace is a dynamic environment that mirrors the cultural and social diversity of the modern city. This paper explores the literature relating to diversity in the workplace and then describes an urban Canadian teaching hospital's comprehensive approach to the promotion of an equitable and inclusive diverse environment. With this goal, four years ago the hospital established an office of Diversity and Human Rights staffed by a social worker.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoc Work Health Care
April 2005
Deconstruction of traditional social work departments can isolate social workers from their primary source of professional affiliation, leaving them without the support to take stands on controversial patient care issues. This paper describes an alternative: the building of a powerful social work collective based on social group work theory that potentiates professional practice while transcending management forms. The model includes group supervision, but moves beyond it to utilize the social work group as a central organizing principle.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF