By Ashley Wills

Sask. Change Day aims to engage health care workers

Sep 23, 2014 | 12:56 PM

A low-cost initiative designed to inspire change in the health care system is being tried for the first time in Canada.

Saskatchewan Change Day aims to get a thousand health care workers from across the province to pledge one small action they can do to make care better.

“It doesn't take much to make a big difference,” Bonnie Brossart, CEO of the Health Quality Council (HQC) said in an interview with News Talk.

According to HQC, recent staff engagement scores throughout the province were not very high.

Brossart said that transforming health care systems or taking on massive improvement goals, like no waits in emergency departments, can be overwhelming.

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But the goal of Change Day is to empower individuals to do what they can. Ideas like “I pledge to ask one patient every day how their experience was and how we could have provided care differently.”

“It's as small as looking at people in the eye and smiling to them when they're in our work environment,” Brossart explained.

All health regions in the province are included in the campaign. Brossart said they started spreading the word at the end of August and they hope to have a thousand pledges online by Nov. 6, 2014.

“This is not a high cost campaign — the capital that is being grown with this campaign is really the good will, the curiosity and the desire to make care better,” Brossart said.

Change Day started in the United Kingdom two years ago and has now become an annual event. Brossart said they plan to study the results once the campaign is over to see if Saskatchewan will adopt an annual Change Day as well.

HQC is an independent agency that has a mandate to measure and report on quality and work with partners to improve health care quality in Saskatchewan.

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