About The Royal
As one of Canada’s foremost mental health care and academic health science centres, The Royal has a clear purpose: to get more people living with mental illness into recovery faster. This is at the core of everything we do and it is driven by the passion, focus and dedication of our employees. Every day, the work that we do transforms the lives of people with mental illness through specialized mental healthcare, advocacy, research and education.
Reporting to the Director, Quality and Patient Safety, the Patient Safety Specialist will work collaboratively with the quality and patient safety team, senior leadership, directors, managers, front-line staff and various internal and external stakeholders across all of the Royal’s campuses to serve as the lead for clinical risk management. This includes leadership for the implementation of local to organization-wide system changes, policies and other initiatives to promote patient safety and mitigate risk.
This position provides support and facilitation to senior operational and medical leaders and their teams for immediate and ongoing response to patient safety items in the organization. The positions plays a key role in promoting and continuing to develop a strong patient safety program throughout the organization. The position also assists in developing leaders in quality and patient safety at The Royal in all programs and services.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Patient Safety Program
- Promotes and supports a safety culture that empowers and engages staff in quality and patient safety.
- Ensures The Royal’s patient safety activities are in alignment with regulatory requirements including but not limited to Accreditation Canada requirements, and provides education or lead actions to respond to recommendations arising from Accreditation surveys.
- Coordinates and promotes organization-wide adoption and dissemination of leading evidence-informed practices in patient safety.
- Contributes to continuous quality improvement by leading quality improvement initiatives related to patient safety.
- Supports and encourage incident reporting throughout the organization focusing on ensuring a ‘Just Culture’ framework.
- Develops and supports the implementation of policies and procedures to support patient safety.
- Collaborates with healthcare teams to implement and support quality/patient safety improvement initiatives.
- Advances learnings from incident analysis and process changes made to promote patient safety outcomes in all clinical programs.
- Plans and implements the annual ROHCG Patient Safety Week in alignment with the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI) theme and activities.
- Leads the annual prospective analysis, from idea to change implementation.
- Liaises with Quality & Patient Safety peers and colleagues in the region e.g. Health Care Quality Network.
Patient Safety Event Management and Oversight
- Leads patient safety and risk incident investigations at the program and corporate level though application the clinical risk management and patient safety science principals & best practices.
- Analyzes patient safety and risk data sources to identify and communicate learnings and recommendations for focused improvement.
- Provides oversight and accountability for the timely execution of recommendations stemming from program and corporate level reviews.
- Escalates risks and safety events when required for Senior Leadership Team situational awareness, advisement and support.
- Provides management and oversight of the organizations electronic safety event reporting system including stewarding the replacement of the current aging safety reporting system (Datix).
- Collaborates with legal services on the submission and associated HIROC claims process.
Clinical Risk Management & Patient Safety Science Best Practice Implementation
- Generate, synthesize, critique and apply research evidence into practice to improve the safety of the care provided.
- Implements evidence based best practices including the adoption of the Canadian Incident Analysis Framework and supporting policies, procedures, resources and training.
Clinical Risk Management Consultation & Capacity Building
- Consult and provide interpretation of legislation, external standards and hospital policies related to patient care to key stakeholder groups.
- Provides risk management and quality improvement education and coaching to staff and members of the management team.
- Develops and deliver risk management communications, alerts and web content.
Leadership & Advisement
- To provide clinical risk subject matter expertise to staff and leaders at all levels of the organization, this includes committee representation and support for organization wide initiatives. This may also include membership within regional committees and working groups.
- To provide significant support to the co-chairs of the organization’s Incident Review Committee. This includes preparing all required committee material and coordinating all respective meeting material such as the event inventory record, supplementary documents, committee agenda & minutes. This requires the provision of succinct and accurate updates on the progress of event recommendation implementation, support and barriers to execution and other relevant items/information.
Other
- Additional duties as required by the Director, Quality & Patient Safety.
- Travels between the organizational sites on a regular basis required.
- Works in a manner that is compliant with staff and patient/client safety practices, policies and procedures of The Royal.
- Ensures a work environment that is conducive to the Royal’s Anti-Racism, Harassment, Discrimination-Free Workplace and work safety policies and practices.
- Demonstrates commitment to health equity, values diversity and contributes to an inclusive working environment.
QUALIFICATIONS
- Undergraduate degree in a Health Care related field or related profession.
- Masters level degree in related health care/administration or equivalent or Masters of Science in Quality Improvement & Clinical Risk Management preferred.
- Certification in Quality Improvement, Patient Safety and Clinical Risk Management
- Ability to analyze and synthesize patient safety data, as reported through the electronic patient safety reporting system, and identify trends and patterns that will lead to improved patient outcomes.
- Demonstrated experience in leading inter-professional teams on local, program and hospital-wide quality and patient safety initiatives preferred.
Knowledge, Skills & Abilities
- Knowledge of the Hospital Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC) claim submission and management process preferred.
- Advanced problem solving and data analytic skills with excellent attention to detail.
- Demonstrated knowledge and experience with performance measurement, data reporting and analysis.
- Proven collaborative leadership, team building and change management skills.
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills with demonstrated ability to develop trusting, credible relationships with all levels of staff, physicians, and volunteers.
- A strong understanding of the principles of health care clinical risk management, quality improvement and patient safety theory and principals.
- Operational knowledge of professional practice standards, statues and regulations governing the operation of a mental health public hospital and pertaining to patient care delivery and patient safety.
- Operational knowledge of patient safety theory and patient safety tools used in a healthcare environment; expertise in root cause analysis, cause and effect analysis, failure mode and effects analysis; occurrence reporting, and disclosure of adverse events and/or unanticipated outcomes as applied to healthcare.
- Operational knowledge of Accreditation Canada’s patient safety required safety practices.
- Project management and change management experience and expertise.
- Knowledge of relevant health care legislation, (e.g. Mental Health Act, Health Care Consent Act, Health Information Protection Act, Quality of Care Information Protection Act, Coroner’s Act, etc.).
- Computer proficiency (MS Word, Excel & PowerPoint required; Visio & Project an asset).
- Ability to function independently and be self-directed.
- Ability to work independently and as a member of a team.
- English level A- is mandatory in oral expression, comprehension, reading and writing. Bilingual (French/English) is considered an asset.
