Reporting to the Program Manager - Quality Management, Improvement & Safety, the Senior Consultant position is a provincial leadership role accountable for developing and operationalizing Primary Care Alberta’s (PCA’s) strategic quality and safety initiatives by applying patient-safety science to ensure a safe and highly reliable healthcare system. The position achieves this by anticipating, reducing and learning from hazards, close calls and patient harm events associated with system-level failures. The Senior Consultant facilitates, supports, and promotes patient safety activities and improvements across PCA programs and services, ensuring alignment with the PCA’s Quality & Safety Plan. As PCA is a new Agency, there are no existing provincial or corridor level quality and patient safety programs or functions in place with no access to former AHS quality and safety services through a transfer service agreement (TSA).
Providing expert consultation, advise and operational solutions, this position is responsible for leading, planning, developing, monitoring and evaluating patient safety and quality improvement strategies and initiatives. These may be related to service improvements, defining and implementing policies, processes and procedures to enhance patient safety across the organization. This position acts as a resource for all PCA programs and services to ensure patient needs are met and future needs are anticipated.
The role works with a high degree of independence and in collaboration with the Quality & Safety team and key internal and external partners to plan and implement programs and processes. Responsibilities also include the promotion and support for integrating quality improvement and patient safety initiatives into day-to-day operations of all areas across the continuum of care with a goal to embed quality and safety in the culture of PCA. The Senior Consultant will act as a liaison between programs/services/portfolios and the Quality & Safety program.
The Senior Consultant is a member of the Quality & Patient Safety Team and has accountabilities to contribute and support the work of that team. While each member of the Quality & Safety team may hold specific expertise related to their health discipline and professional designation, together, the compliment of team members represent a broad spectrum of specialized knowledge, encompassing patient safety, clinical expertise, quality management, applied research, and other elements of a fulsome interdisciplinary approach to holistic patient safety across all PCA programs and services. The team will lead, integrate, and champion system-wide quality and safety initiatives across PCA. The team’s expertise lies in identifying system-based approaches to improving safety to mitigate patient harm.
The Senior Consultant works to ensure PCA’s mission, values, priorities, and strategic direction are integrated within projects and initiatives by disseminating knowledge, facilitating collaboration, building capacity, and fostering relationships with partners across the system.
The Senior Consultant works with PCA senior leaders and directors, managers and leads, PCA scientists, frontline quality and safety staff and providers, and the PCA Executive Leadership Team (ELT) to ensure the successful coordination and implementation of improvement initiatives, and safety protocols across diverse clinical and administrative settings. The Senior Consultant works within a matrixed environment across all partner groups.
Minimum Requirement:
- Expertise in health discipline with current licensure
Perferred:
- Masters degree in health administration, nursing, medicine, allied health, or public health
Minimum Required Experience, Skills and Compentencies:
- A minimum of 5 years of relevant experience with progressive responsibility in Patient Safety and/or Quality Assurance.
- Requires in-depth knowledge at the expert level of the theory and application of patient safety principles, reviews, processes, and tools.
- Requires in-depth knowledge and proven practical experience of Quality Improvement and Process Improvement principles
- Demonstrated leadership experience, preferably in a health care or related environment.
- Must be adaptable to working within a virtual team and at times in person, including a matrixed environment requiring strong collaboration
- Ability to thrive in an agile environment with ambiguous topics including politically sensitive contexts.
- Ability to develop and facilitate presentations to convey information and support transfer knowledge.
- Education or demonstrated abilities in change management, quality improvement practices and methodologies.
- Team leadership skills, including demonstrated ability and comfort with decision making responsibilities, coaching, and teaching, and the ability to inspire and build confidence in others.
- Demonstrated ability to foster relationships and partnerships with internal and external partners.
- Evidence of ability to foster a culture of change acceptance, adoption, and advocacy
- Ability to search for, appraise, and apply best evidence.
- Proven ability to work collaboratively as a contributing team member while meeting tight deadlines
- Proven ability to work independently within a large, complex organization with a variety of staffing groups
- Demonstrated skills in needs identification, gap analysis, critical thinking skills, decision-making, and innovative problem solving
- Demonstrated abilities in conflict resolution and management and well-developed facilitation skills
- Demonstrated pattern of professional and personal development
- Preference will be given to those with five (5) years patient safety or investigation experience in a Safety or Risk Manager role.
