I want to start this week by commending our peers at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. In the face of crisis and senseless tragedy, they mobilized their teams for an incredibly coordinated medical response. I know our staff would have responded with the same level of professionalism and focus, but there is still a lot we can learn from Sunnybrook. We have more incentive than ever before to step up the number of drills we already do with our Emergency Departments and look across UHN to improve our readiness for all codes.

Last week, we marked National Organ and Tissue Donation Awareness Week. The continuing generosity of donors and their families across the province, our strong partnership with Trillium Gift of Life, along with the dedicated efforts of so many staff at UHN, has nurtured the Multi-Organ Transplant Program at UHN to become the largest adult transplant program in North America. If you have not already, please consider registering to be an organ donor at BeADonor.ca. You can also watch Dr. Sunita Singh (Medical Director, Living Kidney Donation Program) as she counters some common organ donation myths in this video.

We also celebrated Patient Experience Week at UHN. I know providing a quality experience has been important to us for a long time, even before we articulated Patient Experience as one of UHN’s Foundational Elements. The effort you all make shows. Patients tell us how grateful they are for the care they receive every day and now the Patient Partners group is telling you themselves. They’ve come together in this video to show how you make a difference. If you have time, please click here to let a UHN staff member know how they’ve made a difference to the patient experience.

National Medical Laboratory Week wrapped up as well. It was a great opportunity to recognize our staff in the Laboratory Medicine Program, Canada’s largest hospital diagnostic lab.

And of course, we celebrated Administrative Professionals’ Day. I have to recognize my own staff, Jane Murgatroyd, Grace Ivo, Femida Nurmohamed and Leslie Lee Pack, for being my lifesavers.

Up next is some great news from Caring Safely. We have thousands of staff here at UHN. As you can imagine, training that many people on new behaviours and tools is no easy feat. I’m proud to share that over ​the last year, we trained 77% (~11,000) of our staff and physicians on Safety Behaviours and Error Prevention tools. We also trained 84% (~700) of all UHN leaders on High Reliability Leadership Methods. Special thanks to our Education team and the volunteer faculty for their time in teaching the sessions. An​d most importantly, thank you to everyone for making our culture of safety a priority. At the end of the day, we are all doing this because it’s the right thing to do—keeping ourselves and our patients safe.

Finally, for those of you who are curious about our progress on all of our Foundational ElementsCaring Safely, as well as Patient Experience, Operational Excellence and People & Culture—I invite you to view the latest progress reports. You can click on those links and see the reports at the bottom of each page. In terms of the road ahead, take a look at what we have planned for 2018/19​. We have ambitious goals and these activities show how we plan on accomplishing them.

Have a great week,

Charlie​

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