Pjila'si (pronounced: êp·chi·laa·si)/(Welcome)
This section of the website provides information about our new physician leader-NS Health integration capacity building initiative, designed by Nova Scotia Health physician leaders for their peers.
(Publicly accessible, this site content is a snapshot of the more robust and extensive Physician Leader Onboarding Brightspace course site open to the cohort and other identified stakeholders.)
About Us (the Nova Scotia Health Authority)
On April 1, 2015, the province of Nova Scotia launched the Nova Scotia Health Authority, a new health system structure to create a foundation for better health and health care. (Health Authorities Act, Chapter 32 of the acts of 2014 [Royal Assent, October 3, 2014]).
Our Mission:
To achieve excellence in health, healing and learning through working together
Watch: Our Vision for Nova Scotia Health Authority (<3 minutes) (video will open in a new window)
We are:
- 23,400+ employees
- 3,204 licensed physicians across Nova Scotia
- 7,000 volunteers
- 45 health services facilities across 4 geographic zones: Western, Central, Northern, and Eastern
- $2 billion+ budget
- 37 Community Health Boards
- 1,200+ active research projects
Background
Nova Scotia Health implemented a new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for physician onboarding in January 2021. You might think of it as administrative onboarding, a key strategic enabler for successful integration with an organization, and success in one’s role. Comprehensive onboarding programs contribute to job satisfaction, engagement, successful performance, and retention. While there are elements of overlap in successful onboarding programs for front-line and leadership positions, they have separate and unique requirements.
We recognize our organization and Nova Scotia healthcare are complex systems in which our physician leaders work. However, until this initiative, physician leader onboarding (operational), specific to working within Nova Scotia Health, was non-existent.
Recognizing this gap, and supported by the Executive Vice-President - Medicine and Clinical Operations, Dr. Nicole Boutilier, Nova Scotia Health committed to implementing the capstone project, Physician Leader Onboarding. Our initiative officially launched March 29, 2023 when the first physician leader cohort met virtually for an Orientation.
This initiative is a first for Nova Scotia Health physician leaders developed by their peers (below) of a larger physician cohort who completed the Doctors Nova Scotia Physician Leadership Development Program in 2021:
Image source: Doctors Nova Scotia
Top row, left to right:
Dr. Andrew Warren
Dr. Lana Šačiragić
Dr. Susan MacKean
Bottom row, left to right:
Dr. Dafydd Davies
Dr. Janneke Gradstein
Dr. Tiffany O’Donnell
This operational onboarding begins where the administrative onboarding ends because “Onboarding Isn’t Enough.” (Harvard Business Review, May/June 2017). To be effective, new physician leaders require more than onboarding: they need to be fully integrated into their leader roles, our organization and with our culture.
Further, leader integration is a process, not a 'one and done' event. Our initiative is a one year cohort journey of new learning, doing, discussing, networking, reflecting and evaluating. Scheduled times and agendas throughout the year will provide opportunities for meaningful interaction amongst the physician leader, their colleagues and peers.
The content of our initiative was drawn from and reflects an intersection of leader practice knowledge and skills capacity building from the fields of health, business and education.
About Physician Leader Onboarding
Highlights of our initiative include:
- a peer-to-peer approach: physician-authored and designed resources, examples, literature and insights are utilized
- reflects a cohort approach
- includes monthly physician leader Fundamentals topics (determined by the cohort) and Check-in virtual meetups
- not a ‘one and done’ leader onboarding process: rather, a 12 month journey of physician leader capacity building: leading, learning, integrating, discussing, doing, networking, reflecting, and evaluating (Apr 2023-March 2024)
- includes 31 physician leader knowledge and/or skill development areas
- provides 45 (plus) self-directed, online e-learning module options (combination of inhouse and 3rd party [national] providers) the physician leader can complete at one’s own time and pace
- involves 11 modalities (learning and activities) & Immersive Experience with a (self identified) Priority Community
- incorporates 7 physician leader learning experience formats (e.g., self-directed, virtual, cohort, one:one)
- involved 6 months of design/development/user testing
- leverages 3 online technologies (this Physician website and the NS Health intranet, Brightspace LMS [learning management system] and the NS Health LMS)
- uses 3 multimedia formats (video, virtual [MS Teams], podcasts)
- involves 2 evaluation processes (formative and summative [formal and informal])
- includes 1 gap analysis tool designed for the physician leader to complete at three month intervals over one year
- facilitated by 1 project lead: an ‘Onboarding Navigator’
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Outcomes for Physicians Leaders |
Outcomes for Health System |
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Physician Leader Onboarding also includes: Psychological Safety; Burnout; Leading in a Crisis; Emergency Preparedness; Conflict; Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Justice; Truth and Reconcili-Action; Medical Racism; Physician Wellness; Communities of Practice; Legislation and more.
Flexibility in our approach will enable us to capitalize on and incorporate new opportunities that may arise that are applicable to our physician leaders. One example is the Health Equity Framework, released in the summer of 2023.
Completing the physician leader integration experiences provides an excellent foundation to Executive Coaching for the physician leader.
