Advancing Diabetes Care by Partnering with Patients

For several years, Chatham-Kent Health Alliance (CKHA) has annually supported a team of allied health professionals to participate in the Dorothy Wylie Nursing Institute/Health Leaders Institute (DWNLI/HLI). The Leadership Institute offers a two-part, concentrated program of study on leadership principles, models, behaviours, skills, and tools to assist participants with the necessary knowledge and training to work effectively on inter-professional teams.

This year, the Diabetes Education Centre (DEC) was chosen to participate. Following CKHA’s strategic direction of Patient and Family Centred Care (PFCC), their project’s goal is to ensure a well coordinated, inter-professional care approach to educate, engage, and to empower staff and the patient/family in their plan of care. Their project focus is on diabetic patients being admitted to all Medicine, Rehabilitation and Continuing Care Units.

They are currently half way through their project. The Dorothy Wylie experience has had a positive influence in engaging their department in leadership and team building strategies and active collaboration around client-centred care. This opportunity has supported them by giving them access to evidence-based models and frameworks and the guidance to apply these practices in a clinical setting.

They look forward to sharing their success at our completion in November. They will continue to ‘model the way’, partner and ‘share the PFCC vision’ with all staff and committees to improve the patient experience at CKHA. If you are inspired and would like to ‘challenge a process’, I ‘encourage’ you to participate in the Dorothy Wylie Nursing /Health Leaders Institute experience.