An Opportunity for Emerging Leaders Across the System
By Sébastien Tessier
Published Wednesday, February 14, 2024
Hi, everyone. My name is Sébastien Tessier, and I am just over halfway through my one-year term as the Leadership Resident with the WRHA Senior Executive team.
The Leadership Resident position was created last year as part of the WRHA’s efforts to create more leadership development opportunities open to staff from all different areas of the regional health-care system. This position is an opportunity for an emerging leader to work with executives on a variety of projects related to systems-level priorities, gain health-care leadership experience, and learn from working across the continuum of care. If you have an appetite for fast-paced learning, leadership, and the desire to have a bigger impact, I can’t advocate enough how amazing of an opportunity this is.
By background, I am a Respiratory Therapist. Having worked primarily with the Children’s & Women’s Hospital at Health Sciences Centre, we support patients from their first breath, and care for them until their last. It’s a challenging role, but one that also appreciates the patient journey from admission to discharge. As part of our expanded scope of practice, I had the privilege of working as a member of the Child Health Transport Team, a small team that travels by air, ground, and water to the most remote parts of Manitoba, northwestern Ontario and Nunavut to provide care to critically ill children and newborns. It’s given me an invaluable appreciation for the populations we care for and the importance of every part of our health system.
Over the course of my career in health care, I’ve had the opportunity to expand my perspective outside my role as an RT. I’ve worked with health systems across the country consulting on clinical applications, supported local, provincial, and national initiatives to reduce language barriers and led organizations focused on interprofessional collaboration. It is this experience, constant desire to learn and passion that drove me towards the Leadership Resident opportunity within the WRHA.
As soon as I started last summer, I had to hit the ground running. I’ve been absorbing information in all directions – I would liken it to drinking with a fire hydrant as the fountain. Working as a clinician outside the realm of the corporate office, you can feel a bit disconnected from the leadership team – clinical shifts are long and focused on the support and care of our patients, clients and residents. Since I’ve been working alongside the executive team, I’ve realized the scale of the information they are processing from across the whole system, and that they are considering what they hear from us as feedback along with everything else. Staff often reach out, and the message I want to share is that the executive team will bring these messages up in discussion and respond.
What’s been amazing these last few months is the support, confidence, and respect the executive has had for me, my role, and my work. It’s the definition of a workplace I never want to leave. Having the opportunity to share perspectives and contribute to the system as a whole is incredibly rewarding. This role brings exposure to working with the executives, and coordinating supporting operations and work with the board of directors. In my first six months, we’ve welcomed the transition of a new government, navigated challenges in system capacity, and supported key investments to improve our system’s capacity to provide care. The executive is accountable, and the expectations are high as they work to address system-wide issues that impact us all, such as access to care and patient flow. For example, few probably know that leadership across the region meets every two weeks to review long length of stay patient cases to work collaboratively towards a plan that will allow patients who no longer require acute hospital care to integrate back into community.
The important lesson that I’ve learned is that the executive is listening, interested in the voices and ideas that come from the front line to improve our system, something I think has resonated with staff in our meetings with you throughout the fall, and our regular town halls. The conversations started at these events continue within the executive team, and your insights have an impact on decision-making.
The Leadership Resident role is new and unique to whoever is in it. As only the second Leadership Resident, a big part of my responsibility is to define what I want the role to look like, and what I want to focus on. Leadership to me means bringing people, ideas, and knowledge together, and there are many of us within the health region who share an understanding of the current strain and a passion for improving our health-care system. I want to build capacity for leadership at all levels to ensure the best future for our system, tailored to our values as a region. I want to explore how we empower and provide staff the opportunity to contribute, and how we leverage these connections to address the issues we face. I recognize the value of this role, so I’m incredibly excited about the work that will continue over the second half of my term, and to share it with you all.
Applications for the WRHA’s next Leadership Resident are now open. If this is an opportunity that interests you, feel free to reach out at stessier@sharedhealthmb.ca.