Wendy Nicklin is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation (CCHSA). Prior to joining CCHSA, Wendy was the Vice President Nursing, Allied Health, Clinical Programs and Patient Safety at The Ottawa Hospital. Wendy assumed her responsibilities at CCHSA early in October and brings to the position more than 25 years of leadership and management experience in the hospital and healthcare sector. Her background includes experience in all levels of patient care, from bedside through to senior management. In addition, Wendy has been a CCHSA surveyor and Board member (1996 - 2002) including Board Chair. She has been involved in a number of provincial and national boards such as the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Studies and the Canadian Patient Safety Institute.
We asked Wendy to share with us her three greatest achievements and what she is hoping to accomplish at CCHSA.
I'm proud to have played a role in moving The Ottawa Hospital (TOH)
closer to its vision of being nationally recognized as the academic
health sciences centre of choice and a leader in Nursing. There
were many rewarding experiences at TOH, including the opportunity
to lead the integration of three distinct nursing professional
groups brought together by the merger of the Ottawa Civic,
Riverside, and Ottawa General hospitals. Working together, we
developed a cohesive and strong nursing professional practice team,
one of the largest in Canada. Chairing the SARS committee
responsible for the coordination of all SARS-related decisions and
actions during the 2003 outbreak was both a challenge and an
opportunity to ensure that healthcare quality was protected with a
particu-lar focus on staff. I also oversaw development of the
quality improvement framework and new coordinated quality program.
Given the priority that patient safety continues to have in
healthcare, I am particularly honoured to have been appointed to
the National Steering Committee on Patient Safety in 2001 and
subsequently, to the founding Board of the Canadian Patient Safety
Institute in 2003.
I am committed to the quality of patient care and quality of
worklife. The opportunity as President and Chief Executive Officer
at CCHSA enables me to remain intimately connected to these goals,
working to advance quality at the national level. Accreditation has
a tremendous impact on enabling the quality of care focus in Canada
and is evidenced every day in the processes in place in health
organizations across the country. I look forward to the day when
accreditation will be recognized and identified by patients and
families as they ask questions and seek out the accreditation
certificate in healthcare facilities. One of my goals is for the
public to recognize accreditation as relevant to the quality of
care and for health organizations to apply the CCHSA standards on
an ongoing basis. Finally, I would like to ask CEOs and senior
health professionals from every accredited organization in the
country to become CCHSA surveyors. The contributions that surveyors
make to CCHSA are immeasurable and in turn, this expertise is of
significant value to their own healthcare systems.
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