Commission Update – April 2012

Commission Update – April 2012

On behalf of our co-chairs, Maureen McTeer and Marlene Smadu, I’m happy to provide a very brief update on activities of the past month. Our final update will come during Nursing Week next month and then we are into the home stretch!

Consultation with the Order of Nurses of Quebec

Representing the Commission, co-chair Maureen McTeer had a lively and informative meeting with the CEO and senior staff of the Order of Nurses of Quebec (l’OIIQ) on March 14, 2012 in Montreal. Our sincere thanks to Gyslaine Desrosiers and her team at l’OIIQ for the very helpful conversation and contribution to our thinking!

Rideau Hall Aboriginal Health Meeting

Leaders of the National Expert Commission and Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) held an exciting roundtable with 28 leaders from across Canada who delivered renewed energy and insights that can inform the Commission’s forthcoming recommendations about Aboriginal health and healing. The national round table was hosted at Rideau Hall, the home of Canada's Governor General, by Her Excellency Sharon Johnston. His Excellency, the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, attended the opening and closing sessions and addressed the participants.

The Commission and CNA teams came away better informed about the issues, and with some new ideas that will be very helpful in crafting the Commission’s final report. Perhaps just as important, we came away feeling really re-energized around this important agenda, and excited by the brilliance all around us that day. What a positive and energetic way to leave a meeting! A great honour for us all to share the day with a brilliant group of leaders from so many areas associated with Aboriginal health.

A brief interim summary of the meeting was posted on our web site the day after our meeting (http://www.cna-aiic.ca/expertcommission/pages/what-we-heard/).

Taming of the Queue

The Commission was ably represented by co-chair Maureen McTeer who spoke in the closing panel of the conference on Friday, March 30, 2012 in Ottawa. 

Joined by panelists from the Ontario Telemedicine Network, the Patients’ Association of Canada and the Western Canada Waiting List Project, Ms McTeer made plain the need for a transformation of the way we think about access and ways to improve access to care for all Canadians. She shared her “inevitable conclusion that tinkering with the system is not enough to solve issues as key as access to quality and timely care for Canadians. Nor will merely setting new targets for wait times for certain surgical interventions after 2014.” She went on to say that, “If we are serious about changing the health care landscape to ensure access by all Canadians to quality and timely health care this decade, we must agree to work to fundamentally reform the health care system that each of us insists we cherish and hold dear.”

Ms McTeer laid out five priority issues, concluding that, “Canadians do not see this transformation as an either/or option. They want and expect access to both primary care and acute care when needed. This transformation is about re-balancing.” Thanks Maureen from all of us on the Commission for your leadership in this conference!

Commission Report

Commissioners are developing their final report, which will be tabled with the CNA Board of Directors Friday morning, June 15, 2012, in Vancouver. It will be released to nurses and the public at CNA’s Annual General Meeting, the morning of Monday, June 18, 2012 also in Vancouver.  Our aim is to be as concise and crisp as we can while building in research evidence, the feedback we received during our cross-country consultations and from public polling and written submissions. Too soon to say much more, but please stay tuned – we are hard at work!

Communication

The Commission has a lively Website, Twitter and Facebook presence – we invite you to check in and follow us!  By the way, the live Twitter feed is linked on the landing page of our website http://expertcommission.cna-aiic.ca.

Vancouver in June

Plans are being made for a media briefing of the embargoed report on Monday morning, June 18, 2012, at the Westin Bayshore Hotel in Vancouver. That will be followed by the release of the report to the nursing community and public at large, at CNA’s Annual Meeting. There will be ample opportunity for members of the media to speak with the Commissioners that day. 

We are pleased that Dr. Gina Browne, who led the Commission’s research synthesis on the impact of nurses on health and system outcomes, will deliver the opening keynote address. Nurses will have many opportunities to interact with the Commissioners informally, as well as during open forums, master classes and panel sessions, throughout the three days of the AGM and convention. We hope you’ll join us there!

Respectfully submitted,

Mike