Port Alberni Health Care Summit - West Coast General Hospital
 

Dr Marc Lambiotte and Kelli Walsh, Site Director, presented on Port Alberni’s collaborative approach to address health care workforce shortages, highlighting improvements in nursing and allied health recruitment. The community held multiple summits involving various partners, such as First Nations, Divisions of Family Practice, health authorities, community development organizations, and local governments. These meetings led to identifying three key priorities areas to collectively support recruitment and retention of health care staff: onboarding, housing, and daycare.

Lessons Learned: Recruitment and retention are a shared responsibility, a key to success is ensuring clear action items are identified and assigned at each meeting and that the right mix of participants are the table, and that meetings improve over time as relationships are strengthened. 

Impacts: Between April 2024–2026, total net new hires were 160, the majority of which were nursing, allied health, and support services, which has supported physician retention. Overall, the project work has increased collaboration and communication between organizations, including Island Health and the MSA, and engaged a variety of partners best suited to support the different aspects involved in recruitment and retention initiatives.

Resident Academic Days - Richmond Hospital and Divisions of Family Practice
 

Drs David Li and Lisa Nakajima presented their Academic Full Day program for family practice residents, which aimed to strengthen Richmond as a destination for future physicians through: hands-on clinical training and skill development, a facility tour of practicum options, informal networking with health care and community partners, and exposure to Richmond’s community resources.

Lessons Learned: Prioritize practical learning over passive activities; these drove the highest engagement and satisfaction, early and ongoing exposure to Richmond is key to building a future physician pipeline, as such, the MSA needs to formalize and expand opportunities for residents to connect with the community.

Impact: The program, launched in July 2025, received positive feedback with ratings of 4.3 to 4.89 out of 5 from participants. Key outcomes include establishing a network of 15 physician leaders and champions to support planning, facilitation, and mentorship for the event and creating opportunities for residents to expand their peer network and connect directly with local family practice preceptors and health care leaders.

Recruitment Activities – Dawson Creek and District Hospital
 

Dr Luay Al Niser discussed the Dawson Creek physician recruitment and retention crisis, where the community lost seven full-time family physicians and other specialists between 2023 and 2024, leading to the formation of a recruitment committee. The committee worked on implementing activities that promote, attract, and encourage new physicians to join the community and hospital, with a clear focus on retention. They held six committee meetings in 2025/26, engaging a total of 58 attendees, including 15 physicians.

Lessons Learned: A coordinated effort within the committee's structure strengthened relationships, streamlined processes, and enabled a unified approach to supporting recruitment and retention among participants.

Impact: The recruitment committee successfully attracted 7 new physicians and reclaimed a gynecologist who had left, returning the community to nearly its 2023 physician levels. Additionally, two donated lease vehicles were available for locums and were used for 431 days, and exit interviews had a 33% response rate in the 2024/2025 fiscal year.

Neonatal Perioperative Surgical Team – Victoria General Hospital
 

Dr Elspeth McGregor presented on a new communication tool a team of clinicians developed to improve collaboration between surgical and non-surgical teams in the neonatal unit at Victoria General Hospital. The team created a flowchart, checklist, and communication tool that brought together pediatric anesthesiologists, neonatologists, surgeons, and other allied healthcare professionals for pre- and post-operative discussions.

Lessons Learned: Talking face-to-face enhances patients care and staff collaboration (reading each other’s notes only goes so far), centering patients in these discussions strengthens the therapeutic relationship and provides families with the opportunities to ask questions, and involving a multidisciplinary team facilitates holistic care beyond the main procedure such as IV access concerns, optimized ventilation settings, post-operative planning, etc.

Impact: The initiative successfully improved communication through pre- and post-operative bedside huddles to review pre-operative and intra-operative clinical pathways, the integration of a flowchart, checklist, and mandatory presence of all providers during handovers, and stronger collaboration between operative and non-operative teams, with positive results from pre- and post-implementation surveys. The tools ensure all concerns are addressed by all team members prior to patient transfers from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICO) to the operating room, and back again, ultimately enhancing patient care.
 

Decolonizing Substance Use in Corrections
 

Tamlyn Smith, Engagement Partner with Facility Engagement, presented on behalf of Correctional Health Services BC about a Len Pierre Consulting Workshop on Decolonizing Substance Use, Racism, and Prohibition in colonial Canada, and Indigenous Harm Reduction Practices. The session was offered for providers working in Correctional Health Services, which operates in 10 BC facilities under BC Corrections. It focused on strengthening interprofessional relationships among providers working in isolating environments with complex patient populations, such as those facing petty and serious crimes, trauma, socioeconomic issues, substance use challenges, including approximately 10-30% who are Indigenous.

Lessons Learned: The importance of connection before content and prioritizing conversation over presentation, protecting time for questions and answers to allow the discussion to flow organically, and creating safe spaces for sharing difficult experiences and addressing biases.

Impacts: Key outcomes included improved sense of connection among providers dealing with complex situations, disrupted tradition thoughts on substance use, harm reduction and prohibition, improved clinical decision-making, and led to a deeper understanding of the struggles of Indigenous communities.
 

Physician Health Program – Doctors of BC
 

Felicia Phan with the Physician Health Program (PHP) at Doctors of BC presented an overview of PHP services and different ways facilities can engage with the program. She outlined various services offered, including a 24-7 helpline, physician peer support, counselling, and community referrals to specialized coaches, therapists, and community specialists. Support is also offered for connecting physicians to their own primary care provider, transitioning back to work/school after a leave, and advice for helping a physician colleague in need. Group services include BIPOC peer support groups, CBT skills for physicians and residents, executive function workshops, and raising resilient kids.

The PHP program can offer MSAs presentations, workshops, booths, as well as encourage their members to join the Physician Wellness Work. Contact info@physicianhealth.com or visit www.physicianhealth.com to learn more.
 

Hospitalists Community Practice – Interior Health Authority
 

Dr Johann Schreve from Vernon Jubilee Hospital presented on the FE Regional Interior Hospital Community of Practice, which was initiated in 2023 to address burnout among hospitalists in Interior Health Authority. Factors leading to burnout included patient volumes and complexity, recruitment challenges, lack of specialist support, digital health, and remuneration, and this project work aimed to build resilience amongst all hospitalist services through sharing best practices, connection and learning.

Lessons Learned: Start small and allow projects to grow naturally though engagement, common themes can bring people together to discuss and collaborate when there is a psychologically safe space to discuss challenges, know how to align your work with that of organization – it leads to synergy, strong project management is key to success.

Impact: The development of collaborative solutions to persistent challenges, such as shared on-call coverage, shifts in lab schedules to enable more efficient patient discharges, and the creation of an informal network that has enabled engagement with senior health authority leaders to help drive positive change within hospitalist programs across the Interior region.

Rapid Access to Cardiology Evaluation (RACE) Clinic Revamp – Penticton Regional Hospital
 

Dr Chad Dyck presented a project to improve access to the Rapid Access to Cardiology Evaluation (RACE) clinic in Penticton, focusing on reducing consultation wait times. Through reviewing the process with frontline staff, and the process at other sites, the team identified issues with pre-testing requirements and an RN-directed triage process that was outside the scope of their job description.

Lessons Learned: Data drives change, engage frontline staff to identify issues and sustain positive change, and ensure you have the right person for the right job (i.e. mindful of scope).

Impacts: Through developing a new process map, the team limited pre-tests and changed to a physician-directed triage process, significantly improving RACE time from referral to appointment to nearly meeting their target of 7 days for P2, and reduced P3 consult-only wait times from 3 months to just over a month.
 

Expansion of Local Surgical Services – Xaayda Gwaay Ngaaysdll Naay Hospital and Health Centre (Haida Gwaii)
 

Dr Tracy Morton presented on behalf of Dr John Barnhill, who developed and implemented a vasectomy service locally in Haida Gwaii. He built a coalition of health authority partners and medical staff, worked collaboratively to develop policies and procedures, engaged broadly to acquire the necessary equipment and implemented a booking process.

Lessons Learned: Local surgery services can be successfully implemented in rural areas with dedicated providers, serving as a model for other remote locations, and working closely with local leadership and facility administration is key to success.

Impact: Dr Barnhill has performed 25 vasectomies since 2022, saving patients over $50,000 compared to traveling to Prince George or Vancouver for the same procedure, and the project itself only cost $2,500 to launch. The electrocautery equipment is now also being used for other procedures.

 

Family Birthing Unit (FBU) Anesthesia Patient Education Video Series - Surrey Memorial Hospital
 

Dr Maha Iyer presented on her and Dr Clara Granberg’s project at Surrey Memorial Hospital to improve patient satisfaction with anesthesia services in the maternity unit. The team created anesthesia information videos initially in English, targeting birthing patients who need pre-operative information about epidurals and spinal anesthesia for C-sections. The project aimed to improve patient understanding and engagement, with plans to eventually translate the videos into multiple languages to serve the multicultural patient population in Surrey. The initiative required coordination across multiple departments including anesthesiology, obstetrics, nursing, and patient education, with funding support from Facility Engagement (FE) and Physician Quality Improvement (PQI) initiatives.

Lessons Learned: Coordination across multi-disciplinary departments enabled success, feedback from patients in crucial and needs to be undertaken as part of implementation, and collaboration with both FE and PQI supported physician engagement and sessional time, while providing constant QI guidance and filming/animation services.

Impact: More effective use of clinical time at patient bedside by pre-emptively addressing common questions, improved patient understanding, preparedness, and satisfaction, and enhanced patient-provider relationships and shared decision-making.
 

Emergency Department Flow – East Kootenay Regional Hospital
 

Janice Tallarico, Lisa Jackson, and Melissa Shallah from East Kootenay Regional Hospital in Cranbrook presented their quality improvement project, which included Drs Tasha Haiduk and Anneline Du Preez, aimed at reducing high left-without-being-seen (LWBS) rates. They engaged MOBIA ED Flow consultants from Newfoundland who conducted an assessment, provided training sessions for ED physicians, staff and leadership, and offered a summary report with recommendations that led to the implementation of an ED Fast Track area, streamlined workflows, and increased engagement and culture shift within the ED.

Lessons Learned: Introducing too many new ideas at once overwhelmed staff, the team learned the importance of focusing on one change at a time and ensuring continuous communication and reinforcement of the vision. Some great ideas were limited by existing staff levels and space, so there is a need to focus on what is feasible given your context and recognize some challenges are outside of your control (i.e. in-patient boarding as a big contributor to ED congestion and not within the Eds control).

Impact: Decreased left-without-being-seen rates (from one of the highest to near IH target rate), improved physician initial assessment times, decreased STEMI door to ECG times, space allocation in ED is more fluid and flexible to improve access for all, and the generation of many new ideas for improving facility operations based on ED Flow philosophies.
 

Improving Wait Times to Rapid Access Geriatric Clinic – Vancouver General Hospital
 

Dr Mark Fok presented on improving wait times at VGH's Rapid Access Geriatric Clinic, explaining how the project worked to address challenges caused by the increase in patient volumes from 1,600 to 2,000 visits annually, extending wait times to care to 7-9 months. The solutions generated included the clinic transitioning from dual EMR systems to Cerner only, creating a new central triaging system, focus groups with geriatricians to inform improvements, and improve communication between Rapid Access Geriatric Clinic leaders and outpatient clinic leadership.

Lessons Learned: Projects like these take time, and funding was instrumental to help carve out physician time to engage in this project work. Support from VCH staff has also been invaluable.

Impact: EMR changes allowed centralized referral tracking and consistent wait-time measurement, a centralized triaging system enabled prioritization of urgent referrals, an outcome of focus group discussions with geriatricians included the decision to dedicate a separate clinic line to be staffed by geriatricians in July 2026, improved communication among leaders resulted in positive changes regarding front desk staffing, and the project team met with VCH analytics staff to establish dashboards and metrics to capture wait times for triaging.