DHiC 04 – Leadership in Challenging Times – v1.1

Tracey MacArthur: We’re stronger as a team. We can accomplish more as a team than you really can as an individual.

Katie Bryski: Hello and welcome to Digital Health in Canada, the Digital Health Canada podcast. My name is Katie Bryski and I am a podcaster turned digital health professional.

Shelagh Maloney: And I’m Shelagh Maloney, a digital health professional turned podcaster. Welcome to today’s episode.

Katie Bryski: Across our health systems, healthcare leaders are navigating increased complexity, demands, and opportunities.

In this episode, we’ll learn from two leaders about their leadership philosophies, their journeys, and how they and their organizations are rising to the challenge. We’re very pleased to welcome to the show, Tracey MacArthur, President and CEO, Hamilton Health Sciences. And Dr. Victoria Lee, President and CEO, Fraser Health.

Thank you for being on Digital Health in Canada.

Dr. Victoria Lee: Thanks so much for having us.

Tracey MacArthur: Yeah, thrilled to be here. Thanks.

Shelagh Maloney: Let’s jump right in. I think one of the things that, it’s always really interesting, and one of the things we’ve discovered is that, Many of our podcast guests have very circuitous routes to how they got to their current role.

So I’m wondering, maybe Victoria, we’ll start with you and if you could maybe just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do and how you got to where you are as well.

Dr. Victoria Lee: Sure, sounds good. I think you’re right. I don’t know of many people that knew exactly what they wanted to do and are in their current roles.

I think circuitous is probably the right term to use it. I would say, uh, my career path has always been, I think, uh, centered around values of equity and justice and then making a large population level impact. So I would say they’re kind of three paths that I’ve taken. First path was doing clinical work.

I was trained as primary care and preventive medicine specialist. So in that role, I worked mostly in vulnerable settings from inner city to remote Indigenous communities across the globe. And then second path, I would say, was in global policy and systems work, then worked with intergovernmental and governmental kind of agencies, as well as countries on climate agenda, development agenda, and comparative health systems, and I was mostly doing global work before coming to Fraser, where I am now in my role for Fraser.

Six years as a CEO president, and I joined 15 years ago because I felt that I could practice globally in a local regional setting as 90 percent of refugees and 40 percent of newcomers in BC actually settle in our region. So didn’t think that I’ll end up where I am currently, but I think, you know, hard work, alignment of values, and purpose and impact lined up and have been in my current role serving.

We provide integrated health services from birth to end of life in our health system.

Shelagh Maloney: I love that. Thank you. Tracey, how about you?

Tracey MacArthur: Well, I’m absolutely thrilled to be on a digital health podcast because that is my first passion and I actually started my career in digital health, I think before it was called digital health in the early, in the early 90s.

And so, spent a number of years as a Chief Information Officer and then continued on into hospital clinical operations, Chief Operating Officer. I worked in mental health for many years, was the CEO of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Ontario and now, of course, more recently, took on the role as, uh, CEO of Hamilton Health Sciences, which is a large academic health science centre in Ontario.

So, I still am passionate about digital health and the transformation possible through technology and, uh, innovation in digital health. So just thrilled to be talking about sort of what got me into healthcare in the first place.

Katie Bryski: It’s really interesting to hear from both of you, not only what’s changed in your career, but also what stayed consistent throughout.

The values that you’ll hold very dear, the passions and the interests that you have. And one of the values that I know Shelagh and I have talked about in terms of being a key attribute of effective leadership is resilience, which I think we’re talking a lot about in the health system right now.

I’m curious about what other attributes you believe make a good leader.

Dr. Victoria Lee: Yeah, I mean, I think one of those questions that I think we constantly reflect on and think about, at least from my perspective, resilience and grit, very important. First and foremost, I always think about self-awareness as being the most important attribute as a leader.

I think doing the inner work to know one’s purpose, values, gifts, and challenges and having the humility to ask for help and ask for support and having at the same time, courage to do the right thing, and sometimes the difficult thing, when it’s required as well, I would add to the grit, kind of, resilience as an important attribute.

Tracey MacArthur: I love that answer, Victoria. You know, knowing when to ask for support, because I think healthcare is, it’s a team sport, right? We, we work in teams, we support people, it’s very much a people business, and I think the establishment of strong teams, helps everyone working in the health care system, which is increasingly strained, but has always been a challenging profession because the stakes are very high in the kind of work that we do.

You need to be able to rely on your teammates. And, you know, we all have lives. We all go through challenges. We all go through professional and personal challenges. And when you have a team wrapped around you, sometimes it’s you who’s stepping up and providing the support for the team. But sometimes it’s a team member that can step in and support you.

And I think, you know, to me, you can’t underscore the importance of that strong teamwork in healthcare.

Shelagh Maloney: You know, it’s interesting when you talk about healthcare absolutely is a team sport. And both of you work for very large organizations. And so you’re not talking about a hundred employees. You’re talking about thousands and sometimes tens of thousands of staff and volunteers.

And so lots of teams, lots of different backgrounds and perspectives. And obviously, the patient populations that you serve are very large and very diverse. And so that leadership and dealing with all of those teams and bringing teams together is probably one of the biggest responsibilities you have, is ensuring that the teams are happy, that you’ve got their backs, that they can work effectively in those milieus.

You know, let’s talk about COVID, probably one of the most significant health challenges that we’ve seen in the last, uh, definitely the last decade and longer than that. Tracey, you were the CEO at CAMH, so lots of mental health challenges and issues during COVID. And Victoria, you’ve already referenced the number of divergent populations that Fraser Health serves and those vulnerable communities.

What did you do to, to ensure that your teams stayed together and got through the pandemic? And on the flip side of that, how did you deal with it as leaders and taking that responsibility and making sure that you took care of yourself so that you could guide your teams effectively? Tracey, maybe we’ll start with you on this one.

Tracey MacArthur: Oh, thanks Shelagh. First of all, I’ll say I don’t want to mislead anyone by saying I took care of myself perfectly during the pandemic. I think we were all under significant personal and professional strain and, you know, myself included. And I think, as a leader, sometimes you have to admit, you know, I’m a human being too, right?

We are dealing with the pressures of the environment and you just come every day and you do your best, but you try and focus on particularly those in caregiving positions. You know, you have to care for the caregivers and make sure that you’re reaching out and supporting those that are in caregiving roles as healthcare workers are.

So, I learned a great deal about how to ask for help. I was really quite touched from help coming from places I didn’t always expect it, and how people rallied to support each other during the pandemic. You know, I think as a leader, you have that additional responsibility because you are responsible for many cases, tens of thousands of people and their own well-being.

And there were a couple of things that I think were very helpful for me. One was just building that base of trust. And I, I did that through a lot of communication and transparency. I think there’s nothing worse than a void of information when there’s a lot of fear and confusion in a situation. So really just being available, being there to ask questions, frequent touch points, town halls, Zoom town halls, and just being open and transparent.

And in some cases saying, you know, we don’t know what’s coming next, but we do have confidence in our abilities, and our team that we will tackle the issues as best we can as they move forward. I think that was very, very important in our team. And then I just go back to that idea of, you can’t do it alone.

And so you do need that group. And a core group of people certainly supported me in leadership and supported each other and backed each other up. And, you know, I think that’s something that didn’t just apply to the pandemic, but that’s something that we can use in all of our work going forward and not forget we’re stronger as a team.

We can accomplish more as a team than you really can as an individual.

Dr. Victoria Lee: Yeah, I think maybe I will say a few things. One is, um, I actually think it’s the hardest time now as leaders, not during the pandemic, if that’s possible. And maybe I’ll put it this way, because in BC, we’ve had the pandemic, but interspersed between the waves, we had one in a thousand-year heat dome event. We had a one in a 500-year flooding event. We’ve had wildfires and the emergencies that’s climate driven have been quite significant all throughout. So it’s been, I would say, more than a marathon, it’s been more of those very long ultrathons.

But with that, I think at the same time, we’re seeing these intergenerational shifts and changes that are occurring in the organization that we probably didn’t see in the organization as this change was happening during the pandemic.

And at the same time, there’s major digital technology transformation that’s occurring and societal impacts of economic downfall that we’ve seen. So I think it’s actually the hardest time to be leaders now compared to before, but the pandemic was a global event that impacted all of us significantly.

And I would echo what Tracey had mentioned. What made the biggest difference, I think, is the intentional and timely and agile communication, transparency, and vulnerability of sharing real time information and acknowledging when you don’t know and being committed at the same time to ensuring that we’ve got your bac,k and we’re trying our best to find out or what could develop a solution together.

I would say, secondly, the biggest thing that made the difference for us. We were as an executive team in, it was the Incident Command, and was in a room all spaced apart. If you can imagine all of us spaced apart, pretty much together 24/7 all the time. We did have a couple of things that we kept putting up as kind of our North Star and part of that was, you know, who do we serve?

So, you know, at the time, our population was about 1.9 million. Now it’s over 2 million, but we had 1.9 million people, over 40,000 people at the time, now over 50, 00, but people that work at Fraser Health. All of the schools, because we have the largest number of schools in our setting, all the economy that was dependent on us actually working through the pandemic, because most of the commercial services industry also are quite centered around our region.

So really focused on who are we serving and, uh, what kind of decisions actually impact the people that we serve. And then we always looked at decision making with that lens of, let’s not let this crisis go to waste, in terms of all the effort that we’re putting in. How do we ensure that it’s sustainable and long term?

And I didn’t realize I was an adrenaline junkie until this occurred. So I found out quickly that I was quite fine for a very long time, even with the emergencies upon emergencies. So I cannot attest to actually looking after myself very well during that time. But I think having the supports available, I could always rely on the team, extended teams. and all of us coming together to work together.

And then I think being intentional now much more in where my healing takes place, often in nature, whether it’s hiking, paddling, or snowshoeing, I try to make sure that I get a little bit of time outdoors, and that’s been much more, I would say, intentional compared to before.

Katie Bryski: It’s so interesting what you said about this being the hardest time for leaders in healthcare. Because we are in such a polycrisis moment now. Whereas I think, during the pandemic, it was a crisis, but there was this sort of widespread acknowledgement that, “Hey, this isn’t business as usual.”

Dr. Victoria Lee: Yeah, I mean, I think, like, the reason I say it’s the hardest time is because everybody had put everything in during the pandemic.

And then some more with the crisis, a fund crisis that I talked about, and then there’s health human resource crisis that’s much more prolonged. And that was, you know, globally estimated by WHO by 2030, we would have the impact of 20 percent of the global workforce not being there. But I think it happened much quicker because of the pandemic.

And I will say, I think the generational shifts that we’ve seen occurred during the pandemic, but I don’t think we noticed that during the pandemic, again, everybody’s just coming together to work together. So all of the changes, and I think the impact of the pandemic we’re seeing now, societally, as well as internally, and, you know, whereas we used to get these, you know, 7:00 p.m. like cheers and, you know, “Hooray for healthcare professionals.” Now we’re seeing increased violence and increased, um, unfortunately, sometimes harassment towards healthcare workers in our settings, whether it’s in the community or in our acute system. So, I think it’s multifactorial. People are exhausted.

There’s societal impacts at the same time. There’s more and more growing pressures because there’s been harassment, healthcare needs that have been not necessarily dealt with, increasing mental health substance use concerns as well as societal concerns and the demographics that, and an epidemiological connection there too.

So all of it together, I would say is making it very challenging at this time.

Katie Bryski: Yes, especially because when you go through the factors that you just listed, so many of them are interdependent. They compound each other. Not only is it multifactorial, there’s a cascade effect.

Tracey MacArthur: Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right, and I think we are facing shifts in our health human resources, although many of us are rebuilding those teams back up because we did lose a lot of the healthcare workforce. We’re now having to support new leaders and new clinicians who are learning about the environment at the same time as dealing with the backlog of unmet health needs, and certainly, the increase.in mental illness, addictions, eating disorders, et cetera, that came through the pandemic.

But we’re also now managing significant process shifts. And that was the piece I wanted to add. So virtual care, for example, or artificial intelligence, things that really emerged in a big way during the pandemic and were quite helpful in moving things forward during the pandemic, now have to be incorporated into routine practice and that in many cases requires a pretty significant shift in the way that we deliver care.

And so when you’re in the middle of a crisis, you just kind of stand those things up pretty quickly, but then you’re when you’re back to more routine business, and you have to put proper structures and processes around them to make them sustainable.

That’s also a lot of pressure on our healthcare system. I think it’s a positive development. I don’t think it’s going to shift back. I think there are great advantages to it, but it’s certainly, you know, a shift in the way that we work.

Shelagh Maloney: I really do want to get back to that, talking about the digital health and talking about AI and some of those new innovative technologies.

But just before we leave that sort of leadership resilience piece, and you know, you both did a great job of articulating how the environment has changed over time, one of the things, and I’m curious about your take on this as leaders.

It’s also the expectations of leaders. You’re so visible, and the social media, and you’re not just leading your individual health organizations, but now you are community leaders, and there’s expectations around you making sure that you have a stance on things or, you know, responsible for having a position and positioning yourselves and your organizations and under increased scrutiny because of social media and other things.

I wonder if you can talk to that a little bit and how has, have your careers changed and differ over time? Do you see a difference? From a social perspective and a presence perspective and how’s that affected your role as a leader or what your expectations are of you as a leader?

Tracey MacArthur: I think there are advantages and then there are always the downsides.

I think we can reach so many more people. There’s certainly a greater presence through social media and through other formats to be able to reach a broader community. And I do think that is. The direction for hospitals. I mean, I think the traditional old model of how hospitals operate a very episodic care, I do think as hospitals look to the future, we have the opportunity to really leverage all of the infrastructure that we have to help create those community hubs that are really needed and drive and support some of that integration within communities for the health system.

So I think it’s a really exciting role that we can step into increasingly, but it does shift the role of a hospital CEO, in my view anyway. Much more engagement. And I think the pandemic drove this a little bit. A greater appreciation for the social determinants of health, so not just health and illness, but social factors that are important, and there’s an increased awareness of that and the role of any healthcare organization to look at the other factors that contribute to the overall health of a population or a community.

You know, I worked in mental health for many years. There was always a focus on that. I’ve certainly seen that focus extend even more broadly post pandemic, and I think that’s a really, really positive development.

You know, some of the challenges being, of course, as soon as you’re out and playing more of that visible role, there’s always that level of scrutiny that you face. There’s always the importance on how you deliver messages, you know, and how it will resonate with the broader community, making sure that you’re communicating in a way so that what you’re intending to put out there is actually what is received. And there’s some additional skill and requirement associated with that, that I think we’re all in the process, certainly I’m in the process, still in the process, of learning, but I do think the role of hospitals in particular can shift to have a broader focus and I think overall that will be a good thing for our system.

Dr. Victoria Lee: Yeah, I think Tracey has alluded to a lot of those components and agree. I think social media has its advantages as well as disadvantages and I think at this point it has been from public health noted as one of the greatest negative impacts now in terms of public health because of the impact on mental health, anxiety, especially for girls, women, as well as a potential impact on democracy as well.

So, I mean, I think I’ve had a bit of a love and hate relationship with social media. I would say overall, I was often like the first user of certain things, and like Facebook for instance, when I started and then I just quit cold turkey and then never looked back. And then started using now, X, Twitter, when I became the CEO, but now I don’t use it anymore either…and that was before Elon took it over, just because of the, again, much more negative impact. So I’m only now on very limited social.

I think on one hand, it’s very important for any CEOs and leaders to speak up on key issues. On the other hand, I think the platform that you use is not necessarily socials, because it doesn’t allow for you to actually discuss complex issues in a complex way. That requires a much more multidimensional look at those issues. So I often use nowadays much more of engagement platforms, whether it’s like just conversations with the CEO.

We’re having more of interactive sessions that allow for dialogue for others to speak up. So I think it’s again, I would go to – important for leaders to speak up on key issues, but I do think it’s not necessarily through one platform. Socials do become quite important, uh, for overall health system communication for us because we go from birth to end of life, from public health services to rehab.

We’ve been using Instagram, for instance, for our adult day programs where it’s gone viral with some of these wonderful culturally integrated services that we’re providing, to using X on some of the messages that we need to provide. So we’re quite diverse in the types of platforms we use to communicate with our target audience, as well as our stakeholders versus what we use for leadership communication and purpose.

Tracey MacArthur: I just want to add: Victoria, exactly the same as you. When Twitter was first out, and I was very inspired by technology and social media and was on everything, and then I got off of everything And I think now I’m really intentional about what I focus on, and really intentional about the purpose and the message, and what I’m looking to convey or glean from any particular platform.

And I do think that that is an important message.

Shelagh Maloney: I like that whole intentionality and, and it’s interesting, I hadn’t thought about it before, but the platform sort of makes the difference as well. And there’s different platforms that might be more conducive to different messages.

I want to get back now to the innovation that Tracey, you talked about: AI, and you talked about the pandemic being a bit of a, a catalyst for us, incorporating new technology that perhaps we in a risk-averse environment, we would be less willing to undertake. And we did take some of those risks. Both of you have significant innovation agendas in your organizations. And so I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about what are some of the things that are exciting to you, in terms of things that you’re looking at in the next maybe 3-5 years.

Tracey MacArthur: I think a couple of things that are important – because I could talk for an hour about this – but you know, I do think when you have a crisis sometimes it forces the adoption. Pushes people outside of their comfort zone a little bit, to adopt new ways of doing things. But more importantly, the general public was forced to learn how to interact in a more digital way with organizations.

And once the public sort of shifts, they continue to demand more and more of that interaction because it just, facilitates an easier interaction for them. In many cases, anyway. So, I will say, one of the big themes for us is how we can use digital health to drive more seamless communication and collaboration throughout the region.

How can you have shared services, how can you have shared images, digital pathology and imaging and other things .so that we can actually streamline the care of patients in the community and in the region?

So that’s certainly a focus. Also using our technology, we have Epic as our clinical information system, just the tremendous amount of data and the knowledge that we can glean to continue to refine and improve our services is based on the analytics that we can pull from our clinical information system.

And then I’m really excited as an academic health science centre. One of my dreams before I end my career, eventually within healthcare, is how do we shorten the span of time from when we make a new discovery? That’s going to have a tremendous positive impact on many people from the time that comes from research into clinical care.

And I’m excited about the ways that technology can embed. Some of those new discoveries and new learnings, hopefully a lot faster than that traditional path that we’ve had so far.

Shelagh Maloney: Victoria, how about you?

Dr. Victoria Lee: I mean, I’m a passionate advocate for digital transformation. I see it as the biggest catalyst as means to what we really require in our health system, which to Radically transformed from sickness care to wellness care that, you know, right now I think we’re struggling because all roads lead to emerge, but really we need to have all roads lead to primary community care.

We have a very reactive system instead of proactive system, quite siloed instead of integrated, as Tracey was mentioning. Right now, we have unknown value that’s driving our health system, but ideally we have value for outcomes. Currently, we’re running with one treatment for all, but we hopefully will get to precision health and wellness where we would get into more equity in terms of outcomes as well.

So I kind of look at it from that kind of macro lens, and for us to get to that macro transformation, that’s much more radical. I believe digital and technology are the biggest toolkits that we have and really the currency overall society, uh, now with what’s happening with AI and Gen AI. So, uh, I think fundamentally we’ve done things during the pandemic, again, looking at that, “do not let the crisis go to waste.”

So we were the first to open mental health and addictions, uh, virtual hospital kind of units, uh, first to run some of the virtual care services in BC, first to run virtual scheduling. So we did quite a bit during that pandemic and what would normally take months to years within days to weeks.

We are now building on, in the biggest project that we have underway. is a system wide digital twin, which, unlike other systems, where there’s a smart hospital, that’s just digital twin, uh, we’re looking at the whole system that’s integrated. that will actually provide much better decision making and informed information for most importantly, patients and families, and then providers and then also operationally, decision makers.

At the end of the day right now, what we’re running towards, is how do we ensure that we release time for care? Because that’s again combined with that health human resource challenge that we’re looking at, we really need to look at how do we generate better quality, but also release time for care so that we’re not adding to administrative burden, or we’re not adding to scope of work that’s below what people can practice at in that team based way with AI technology augmentation.

So I think lots of exciting opportunities and exciting work that’s underway that we can actually adopt and adapt from different industries as well as within health.

Tracey MacArthur: I’d like to add another comment, too. You mentioned equity, and I think we have to also comment on the ability for everyone across the country to get access to similar services, which has been geographically limited, you know, without virtual care.

So. It really opens up services that otherwise, you know, people would have to travel for many hours, or in many cases wouldn’t have access to receive. But even in other ways, you know, we offer through Hamilton Health Sciences, even virtual resuscitation coaching in real time for those in remote communities.

We have virtual translation, you can have a live person, takes about 10 or 15 seconds for it to load up so that you can actually have a conversation. Someone on a screen translating for you with a patient in their, in their own language. It’s just tremendous. I could, you know, there’s a hundred things on this list that can be enabled through digital transformation.

And I think it just creates more of a level playing field across the country for access to different levels of care.

Dr. Victoria Lee: I agree with Tracey. I think especially if we can be intentional in our design. And are actually monitoring the outcomes because in the end, there’s already racism, there’s stereotypes, there’s inequities that are built in our system, and we want to make sure that when we’re building and scaling these initiatives, we’re intentionally looking at equitable outcomes as one of the key factors from ethical and quality decision making.

Katie Bryski: I’m really struck by that concept of equity by design. So it’s not equity as afterthought, it’s also not perpetuating the digital divide, because I think there can be sometimes inequities or unintended consequences. I’d love to ask if there are projects or initiatives at your organization that you’re particularly proud of from an equity or a transformation point of view.

Dr. Victoria Lee: As I mentioned, we serve probably some of the most diverse populations in Canada, and fastest growing as well. And, you know, I think there’s basic level of what does cultural safety and humility look like from health system perspective. And I think, because of our setting, we went through the pandemic of, you know, it’s of course not just translations, but how do we ensure that what we’re providing and the kinds of messages that we’re providing, as well as engagement in our services are actually culturally relevant.

So I’ll give two examples. One is. In the area of South Asian health, we’ve, uh, one of the largest South Asian populations in our region. And also South Asian population is not one population, but it’s quite a diverse population, diaspora in itself. What we’ve done now is work across the continuum of services that we provide from public health, going into healthy schools, and going to working on healthy eating, to having addiction services that’s specific to the South Asian population.

And going into long term living, those types of services that have that cultural lens to what we provide, so quite integrated even in the food that we provide in our setting, whether it’s in acute care or in our community, and then the other area that I believe BC as a province has been leading is in the area of Indigenous population, uh, because, uh, of, uh, United Nations Nations Declaration of Indigenous Peoples Rights. and BC adopting a legislation that’s called DRIPA specific to that area.

Again, lots of work together with 32 First Nations and six chartered Métis communities, uh, rural urban populations in our region to work together on, “What does a wellness map look like and how do we ensure we go upstream?” And I really appreciate this aspect Tracey brought out earlier about the importance of determinants of health and the multi-generational thinking as well as determinants health type of wellness thinking.

We’re learning a lot through that journey of, how do we eliminate racism in our health system, but beyond that, ensure that there’s a healthier, equitable outcomes for Indigenous populations that currently have lower life expectancy and higher incidence and mortality from diseases and illnesses and other comorbidities.

So, I think that’s an area that I’m quite proud of, of how we’ve come together engaged. And again, how do we ensure that we are actually creating that pipeline of people that may become interested in healthcare, to become interested in healthcare, as well as ensuring that there’s safety in providing feedback, because as we know, due to colonialism, people do not necessarily feel safe in sharing their feedback.

So going into having liaisons that are available that can support the community. So lots of work underway by no means to share that we’re there, but looking at those learnings as a trajectory instead of, you know, a target that we’re going to achieve.

Tracey MacArthur: I just wanted to add one thing, and of course I’ve been at Hamilton Health Sciences for a short time, and it’s a very diverse organization, so I would have a long list of specific initiatives to call out, but you know, maybe one theme that really stands out for me, and something that we’re very intentionally lifting up, is our focus on translational research and our role as an academic health science centre. So how do we very tightly link a lot of this very significant research activities that we’re undertaking, to delivery of sometimes first, you know, ever interventions within care right within our clinics and within our hospital walls.

And I’ve certainly seen a lot of gains as we run the regional cancer program for our area and that strong link between. research and new innovation in cancer treatments that we’re able to implement very rapidly within our Juravinski Cancer Centre, but also programs like we run the regional burn units, one of two in Ontario, with a very strong link to really world class research, and so you know when you’re coming to the organization that you’re getting the kind of care you just can’t get anywhere else.

You know, I don’t think anyone should be coming to an academic health science centre without having the opportunity to get access to clinical trials and other, uh, new innovations, you know, within the healthcare field. So that’s a big focus for us.

Shelagh Maloney: The emphasis on social determinants of health, it, uh, sets it stage very nicely for our next episode where we will actually talk about those very things.

So, in the conversation that happened today, I think, gosh, the health sector is in very good hands. We’ve got strong leaders like the two of you, you know, really concentrating and focusing on having a social impact. And, you know, I’ve heard both of you talk about humility and courage and building trust.

Maybe one last question before we wrap up. A lot of our listeners are young digital health professionals, young leaders, or aspiring to be leaders, any advice that you would give to somebody who potentially wants to be where you are, wants to be in a leadership position or role in the digital health space?

Dr. Victoria Lee: Yeah, I’ll go to, um, know yourself and your, uh, values and purpose and what you’re driven by. What gives you energy? I think, again, I go to like, know yourself as the first point for leadership because I think unless you know yourself very well and have looked at all the depths and layers of yourself, uh, it’s hard to inspire and lead others.

So I would say one of the most important things that I’ve learned through my journey is that getting into inner awareness. It’s easier than making decisions, whether it’s in your career or personal life, about what are the parameters or pulse checks that you would have against. And if you have those that are there for you, it’s much easier to make those decisions when it’s needed.

I’m sure there have been many difficult and competing priorities, whether it’s in personal or professional life. And I find that that gives you inner strength. And the other thing that I found very helpful is having, what I call board of directors, that’s informal, that’s out there for you, whether it’s people that you respect or people that you know will give you credible feedback or people that will be looking out for your best interests, whatever that may be, having a diverse group of people that you can rely on for true feedback is incredibly important because as we talked about with social media or other media platforms, you’ll hear lots of stuff, but a lot of it will be noise, and you need to know who you need to actually hear from and listen to.

So I think having those individuals around you is very important in leadership development.

Tracey MacArthur: I mean, absolutely agree. A diverse group of people to learn from. It’s not going to be one or two people. You’ll learn different things from different people. You’ll learn from successes and from failures. That’s very, very important, and I would also add, don’t be afraid to put yourself out there.

You know, sometimes you do have to really take those risks, be fearless, try things, you come to know yourself, you learn what you’re interested in, what you’re passionate about. It really does take a passion for something to have great success in it, I think. So, that takes courage and trial and error and not being afraid to fail because you will fail.

There are things that won’t work out. There are jobs you will try that you thought were the job, was the job you wanted ended up not being for you. And so, you know, just putting yourself out there, understanding that setbacks and failures are in fact, I think, a better, learning, uh, than sometimes the success.

Katie Bryski:

Thank you so much. Just echoing the sentiment Sheila shared a moment ago. And while both of you were speaking, I kept thinking of the quote, Physician, heal thyself. And I think in our case, it’s really health leader, know yourself, right? Knowing the values that you have, knowing the passion that you bring to your work.

And I think with both of you, it’s so clear how those have shaped your approach to leadership and your careers, and the impact that you have on others. So once again, we’d really like to thank you for taking the time to share with us today on the podcast.

Tracey MacArthur: Thank you. Wonderful speaking to you.

Dr. Victoria Lee: Thanks so much for having us.

Katie Bryski: So, Shelagh, what did you think?

Shelagh Maloney: I say this every time, but I honestly, I’m just really enjoying these conversations and to have Dr. Lee and Tracey, it’s really inspirational leaders. And one of the things that, I mean, these are large organizations and both of them have just such a great attitude and outlook and really take seriously, I think their commitment and the responsibility to social impact and really not leaving anybody behind.

And they’re living this. And I really took to heart, you know, Victoria’s comments about know yourself and be passionate. And Tracey talked about, you know, your greater your passion, your greater your commitment, the greater your energy you have to a cause. And I hadn’t thought about it really, but, you know, COVID was, we were singularly focused on COVID and all hands were on deck and everybody was working through that.

But it’s true that now high energy level that took to COVID, we just, there’s so many crisis after crisis, so many different factors make it, A difficult place to work and a difficult place to be a leader. And so when you have leaders at the caliber of the ones that we just spoke to, really, uh, makes me feel very fortunate and grateful to have leaders like that in the system.

Katie Bryski: Definitely. And I think leaders that really prioritize not only the, those using and served by the health system, but within their own teams. As well. Um, and it was interesting to hear Dr. Lee talk about a generational shift. And I wondered if the conversation would go this way, just thinking about how we think about work and leadership and what does leadership look like?

Because I would say for myself as perhaps more, a different generation, that, that vulnerability, that authenticity, that bringing your whole self to work is something that, I don’t know if expect is too strong a word, but when I see it in leaders, it doesn’t feel strange. I deeply appreciate it. I am grateful for it.

Shelagh Maloney: Yeah, that’s interesting. And I think I would be curious to know what our listeners think. And that has been, from my perspective, that has been a fairly significant shift. The leaders were the ones that were running the organizations and they were the, the, the boss. And now they’re more of a team member whose role is to bring up the best in us.

And I think that mindset of what an effective leader is may have changed over the years. And I think in healthcare, just because of the way our society is going and, uh, the crises and the health issues that we’re having our aging population, all the things that we’ve talked about over the course of this episode and episodes beforehand, it just makes it that much more important.

And, and, you know, let’s get back to sort of the digital health piece of it. Hearing these leaders say and many others that digital is one of the most, highest potential to transform the system to help us achieve some of the impacts and the objectives that we’re trying to achieve over the course of, uh, you know, improving the health system.

Katie Bryski: Yeah, certainly a lot of potential and I appreciated the discussion about equity and equity by design in today’s conversation. And I know we did allude to next month’s podcast topic. So listeners, hopefully you are just as excited as we are.

Until then, thank you so much for listening to Digital Health in Canada, the Digital Health Canada podcast.

Thank you for listening to today’s episode. Digital Health Canada members can continue the conversation online in the community hub. Visit digitalhealthcanada. com to learn more. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get new episodes as soon as they’re available. And tell a friend if you like the show. We’ll see you next month. Stay connected, get inspired, and be empowered.