Straight Talk with Mary Ackenhusen… live!
For our latest Straight Talk with Mary Ackenhusen, we decided to do something a bit different. At last Friday’s True North Forum at Lions Gate Hospital, in front of a live audience of more than 
100 leaders, we recorded her talking about a range of timely topics including:
- leadership
- the culture of meetings at VCH
- the status of Clinical and Systems Transformation (CST)
Listen
Listen to her thoughts here on the VCH Up For Discussion Blog.
The forum
Left to right: SET members Glen Copping, Dr Patrick O’Connor, Mike Nader and Mary Ackenhusen talk about what they’ve learned as leaders at VCH.
More casual than past forums, Friday’s speakers were armed only with a clip-on mic and a comfy chair, without a Powerpoint presentation flashing behind them. Speaking at the forum, in addition to Mary, were several members of our senior executive team:
- Mike Nader, chief operating officer for Coastal and emcee for the forum, shared a story about his personal leadership journey and “what he knows for sure” (as Oprah would say) based on his experience.
- Other senior executive team members — Dr. Patrick O’Connor, Glen Copping and Anne Harvey — also shared lessons they’ve learned as a leader.
To close, leaders in the audience or on the webcast had the opportunity to ask questions and join in the discussion.
Watch the webcast
- Watch the True North Forum webcast
(Use this Classic Viewer link if you have trouble viewing the main webcast link on older web browsers.)
While leaders were encouraged to attend the forum, we’re sharing the content in various formats with everyone in the organization.
Forum resources
- True North Takeaways – It includes the top four takeaways from the forum. [internal link]
- Chairing a Great Meeting – We all have a role to play in managing our workload and it starts with better and fewer meetings! [internal link]
- Engaging in a Great Meeting – Tips for being a star participant! [internal link]
Stay tuned
Stay tuned for next week’s podcast featuring the leadership panel’s stories and insight—what they’ve learned as leaders and how it benefits their roles at VCH.
Claire
Thank you for this webcast. It was very informative and I appreciated the first hand updates on some of the goals for the organization. I also appreciate the effort of the senior leadership team, especially Mary, to be approachable and available to the questions and suggestions of front line staff. I would like to respond to one of the last audience questions about referring to patients and clients as customers and whether this is well received in health care. I think one of the reasons staff and patients don’t respond well to this term is that our system of healthcare in Canada is different, particularly from the US. In my experience, in the past when we have been encouraged to refer to patients as customers (and this suggestion seems to come up every few years), the patients/families themselves have no idea who we are talking about. They see themselves as patients or clients, not customers and I would suggest many don’t have a problem with that terminology. Thank you again for the presentation.