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Health Professionals

Message from Crystal Houze, Chief Nursing Executive/Chief Health Professions Officer

Crystal Houze, RN, BScN, MHSM Chief Nursing Executive/ Chief Health Professions Officer Program Director, Medicine/ Critical Care Click here to read Crystal's Blog

Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, for the second year in a row, has been named one of Canada’s Top 100 employers. The Top 100 Employers competition attracted over 75,000 submissions from employers. Of these 75,000 submissions, 16,000 were invited to apply for the competition. Of this number, 2,600 started the application process but not all submitted. The applications were rated on 17 areas of interest including Workforce, Physical Environment, Work Atmosphere, Communication, Health and Family-friendly Benefits, Financial Benefits, Compensation and Vacation Allowance, Employee Engagement, Training and Development, Environmental Leadership, and Community Involvement.  At CKHA, we celebrate our staff and are proud of this achievement.

At Chatham-Kent Health Alliance (CKHA) we have approximately 638 nurses, and 207 health care professionals.  These individuals make up the largest group of health professionals at CKHA, and play a vibrant and pivotal role in the care and management of patient and family centred health care. 

The health professionals at CKHA bring a crucial component to the many highly skilled and inter-professional teams.  Their involvement is vital to fulfilling the vision and mission of the hospital.  They are essential in the areas of education, advanced practice and administrative leadership. 

CKHA was officially designated a Best Practice Spotlight Organization (BPSO) on April 23, 2009.  Spotlight organizations are health-care organizations selected by the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO) after a three year candidacy period. CKHA earned this prestigious designation by implementing and evaluating a series of evidence-based best practice guidelines.  CKHA is recognized as an organization striving to create a culture of excellence within Canadian health care by embedding strategies into daily nursing practice, patient care, patient safety, systems and processes.

The partnership between RNAO and CKHA is dynamic and long term; it focuses on making a positive impact on patient care.  BPSOs are asked to continue to demonstrate creative ways to successfully use best practice guidelines, evaluate their use and measure the outcomes for research and improved patient care as well as share lessons learned with other organizations.  Introducing Best Practice Guidelines at CKHA has enhanced nursing practices, improved patient outcomes and shaped how we have developed new policies and procedures.  This designation will allow us to highlight the outstanding work we have carried out and demonstrate our capacity to continue to build on our achievements.
We will continue to expand on these guidelines and implement additional guidelines throughout the organization.

CKHA is embracing their strategic goal “We will partner with patients and their families in the delivery of safe, quality care”.  Listening to the voices of our patients and their families is helping us make decisions that shape policies and care.   We have developed a new visiting policy that ensures it is the patient who decides what family is most important to have with them during their hospital stay.  This is one of the first policy changes that we have made in partnership with patients and families.  We have also developed communication cards that are at the nursing station of each unit.  They give the unit phone number and the extension numbers to all rooms.  This way, family can call directly to the patients’ room.  Our families have told us that this is important to them, and we have listened.