Chair in Palliative Care

North York General Hospital (NYGH)
The Freeman Centre for the Advancement of Palliative Care
North York, ON

Description:
The Organization:
North York General Hospital (NYGH), a fully-accredited community academic hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto, is one of Canada’s leading community hospitals. Offering a broad continuum of integrated primary, secondary and selected tertiary services, NYGH operates both acute and long-term care beds across its sites, serving 500,000+ residents in North Central Toronto. Through partnerships, collaboration and academic endeavours, NYGH seeks to set new standards for patient-and family-centred care and is committed to building on our academic foundation through enhanced education, research and innovation.
NYGH has approximately 526 active physicians and offers a full range of services in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Paediatrics, Family and Community Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Mental Health and most specialties and subspecialties in Medicine, Surgery and Cancer Care.

NYGH offers comprehensive acute care, ambulatory and long-term care services across its sites:

General site — Our largest facility, the General site, offers a full range of services to patients of all ages, from the most fragile infants to the elderly. All inpatient acute care services and our 24-hour full-service Charlotte and Lewis Steinberg Emergency are located at the General site.

Reactivation Care Centre (Finch site) — The NYGH Finch site houses the Reactivation Care Centre which is designed to support patients who no longer need acute (hospital) care to safely transition to their next level of care, which may be long-term care, home or another setting.

Ambulatory Care: Baruch/Weisz Outpatient Care Clinic, The BMO Breast Diagnostic Clinic, part of the Karen, Heather C Lynn Steinberg Breast Centre; Gale and Graham Wright Prostate Centre, Eye Surgery centre, Diabetes Education Centre and Centre for Complex Diabetes Care.
Seniors’ Health Centre — long-term care home with 192 beds and specialized geriatric services.

Phillips House — Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Adolescent Eating Disorders Outpatient Services

For more information about NYGH, please visit our website at: http://www.nygh.on.ca.

FREEMAN CENTRE FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF PALLIATIVE CARE
Freeman Centre for the Advancement of Palliative Care has been a leader in improving the lives of patients with life limiting illness. The Freeman Centre was established in 1999 by a group of dedicated family physicians who identified the need for a community-based service to support palliative cancer patients and their families at home when they became too ill to return to their doctor’s office. The Centre was established through a strategic vision to provide excellence in clinical care, education, and research. The Freeman Centre team is composed of clinicians from various disciplines who work in multiple settings and maintain continuous contact with one another in order to effectively link the inpatient, ambulatory and community care settings. The team includes physicians, advance practice nurses, nurses, social workers, researchers, chaplains, and other allied health clinicians. In this model, the patient’s family physician functions as an essential part of the team. The result of this team approach, which operates in collaboration with other care providers at NYGH, makes the Freeman Centre model an ideal one for providing care. The spectrum of care and communication between team members is unique and exceptional among other NYGH-based services and has been recognized as a “Leading Practice” by Accreditation Canada.

The Freeman Centre for the Advancement of Palliative Care is a unique model of palliative care delivery that strives to provide the best care through a consistent clinical team in the most appropriate setting. This provides continuity of care and a seamless transition for patients from time of referral to end-of-life. The goal of the program is to improve timely access to services and provide a positive healthcare experience for patients and families.

Mission: To build system capacity and provide seamless and integrated palliative services across the continuum of care to any person living with an incurable illness, through partnerships and collaboration.

Vision: The Freeman Centre for the Advancement of Palliative Care will be recognized locally, regionally and nationally as a leading practice that provides exemplary palliative care in partnership with other healthcare providers.

Strategic Directions:
1. Define and promote a culture of exemplary palliative care to spread awareness
2. Create and implement an integrated care collaborative model to support patients and families wherever “home” is and optimize quality of life
3. Provide enhanced education, mentoring and training for healthcare professionals and trainees to ensure sustainability
4. Enhance community outreach services through partnerships and collaboration to allow patients to die at home
5. Offer formal support and training to caregivers to improve the patient and family experience
6. Conduct research, quality improvement and knowledge translation to share best practice, showcase work and lead innovation care

Key features of the Freeman Centre are the seamless transition of patients through each care setting and consistent delivery of care by one integrated multi-disciplinary team from referral to end of life. The Centre has three delivery models: inpatient, ambulatory care and home-based care. The inpatient program offers consultation and dedicated pain and symptom management beds into which patients are admitted from elsewhere in hospital or directly from home, avoiding emergency department visits and reducing hospital costs. The outpatient clinic enables patients to manage pain and symptoms with the help of the same clinical team from their inpatient stay. The outreach program offers home-based care for patients too ill to leave their homes.

THE POSITION
Position Overview:
The Freeman Centre for the Advancement of Palliative Care is seeking a physician to be the Chair in Palliative Care. The Chair will be a visionary leader with a desire to transform the future of palliative care delivery and supportive care at home. The Chair will have an incredible opportunity to advance this program by effectively translating research into practice through the adoption and implementation of innovative models of care delivery that can, ultimately, lead substantive system change in palliative medicine, both inside NYGH and in the broader community. The Chair will also be the Medical Director of the Freeman Centre for the Advancement of Palliative Care and an active member of the Palliative Care Team.

This position is a five-year appointed term, renewable.

Reports to:

• Chief of Family and Community Medicine
• Vice President, Medical and Academic Affairs
  
  Works in partnership with:
• Board of Governors
• Medical Advisory Committee
• Senior Leadership Team
• Program Director, Cancer Care and Ambulatory Program
• Medical Director, Cancer Care
• Other Program Chiefs and Medical Directors
• Physicians, Staff and Volunteers
• Patient and Family Advisors
• Learners
• Hospital Foundation
• Other external partners and stakeholders:
  – Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto
  – Ontario Palliative Care Network
  – North York Toronto Health Partners
  – Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care
  – Central, Toronto Central Health Regions
  – Partner Hospitals
  – Professional Associations
  – Government and Regulatory Bodies
  – Education and Training Institutions
  – Other community partners, health and social services/institutions

Key Leadership initiatives for the Chair will be to:
1. Actively participate in the vision of palliative care by advancing NYGH’s unique community-based model.
2. Continue to put research into practice by embedding and sharing best practices and knowledge translation activities that can revolutionize palliative care delivery.
3. Build system capacity by advancing the discipline of palliative care among the University of Toronto – Toronto Academic Health Science Network and the research and education teams at NYGH.
4. Champion the use of technology and other innovative tools and models of care to increase capacity for care in the home for patients.
5. Continue to evolve an integrated and collaborative model of care by enhancing existing programs for home-based palliative care.
6. Optimize opportunities for leadership, innovation and improved health outcomes by actively seeking out new partnerships across a range of community and health service providers.
7. Work closely with colleagues in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Internal Medicine and Psychiatry among others, to develop an integrated, patient-centred and seamless model of care for patients across the care continuum for patients with life limiting conditions.

Key Accountabilities:

• Act as a central voice to lead and empower NYGH’s palliative care strategy.
• Lead the development of innovative care models with an inter-disciplinary team – including physicians, advance practice nurses, pharmacists, social workers, occupational therapists, dieticians, and spiritual representatives.
• Support and leverage an interprofessional approach to care and education.
• Advance the continuum of care from primary care, to the emergency department, to home care, to ensure quality of care for patients and families.
• Leverage key-learnings in palliative care and the expansion of supportive care for all chronic conditions.
• Develop measurement and evaluation tools to demonstrate impact and efficacy of care models.
• Advance the Freeman Centre’s research goals that ultimately seek to raise the Centre’s profile, improve patient care and outcomes, and contribute to the growing body of best care practices for patients with advanced and complex illnesses.
• Continue to engage the patient and family advisors in providing input and contributing to the key goals and objectives of the Centre.
• Use a formalized leadership platform to advocate for systemic shifts in palliative care.
• Create a central hub for all trainees in palliative care and act as an educational resource to help define/build curriculum for all palliative learners to increase competency and comfort with palliative patients.
• Act as clinical teacher for family medicine and other students/residents to train future physicians with a more comprehensive understanding of hospital and community-based palliative care.
• Advance knowledge translation activities by publishing in journals and disseminating information on a local, provincial, national and international level.
• Work closely with NYGH’s Centre for Education to coordinate with existing training programs, including the University of Toronto program.

THE PERSON
Education/Professional Credentials
The new Chair will be an experienced, inclusive and visionary leader with a proven track record in medical leadership, clinical practice, teaching and applied research. Passionate about palliative care medicine and recognized as an effective and respected change leader with a keen interest in research, the new Chair will be committed to improving palliative care and supportive care services in a clinical setting as well as participating in broader systems-level change.

• Licensed by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, or eligible for licensure.
• Certification in Family Medicine, or Internal Medicine, or its equivalent.
• Palliative Care training.
• Eligible for an academic appointment at the University of Toronto.

Experience/Competencies

• Possess a high level of professional competency as a Physician with clinical and leadership experience.
• Track record of medical education, teaching at multiple levels; and evidence of scholarly activity(research and/or professional activity) in palliative care.
• Demonstrated expertise in interprofessional collaboration amongst palliative care providers,
• including, physicians, advanced practice nurses, nurses, social workers, psychiatrists, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, dietitians and spiritual care providers.
• Experience with program clinical protocol development and order set implementation and management.
• Highly effective interpersonal and communication (spoken and written) skills combined with
• excellent organizational skills, with demonstrated ability to achieve performance improvement outcomes.
• Recognized for championing service excellence.
• Actively encourage a spirit of co-operation amongst team members.
  

Application Process:
Qualified applicants are encouraged to respond in confidence to Dr. Vishal Patel – Chair of the Search Committee, c/o Shajiga Rohan via email Shajiga.Rohan@nygh.on.ca.