Corporate Welcome: If It Ain't Broke - Break It Anyway

It’s only been about 18 months since we began working on the re-building of our Corporate Orientation day, which we call the Corporate Welcome. We had just reached a point where the planning and process of the day was running smoothly; and based on evaluations, much to the satisfaction of the participants.

Then one day in November Margaret Tansey, our VP of Professional Practice and Chief of Nursing asked if we could make half of the day available for a grant-funded educational pilot program on Inter-professional Practice. This obviously threw our program into chaos – but I believe that if the right opportunity presents itself, even the best made plans can be adjusted to seize the chance. It was quickly apparent to me that this was a chance to make a profound cultural impact on teamwork at the ROHCG moving into the future.

As many of you know, I have worked at the Royal for a long time – and team-based practice and collaboration (or the lack of it) has been described to me as an obstacle for most of my Royal career. I liked the idea of introducing new recruits to the values of inter-professional teamwork. The 10 competencies or capabilities model also made perfect sense.

My job was to compress a full day of content into the morning agenda. That wasn’t easy. I also wanted to do what I could to ensure that our Orientation participants accepted this new and experimental workshop. Clocking in at about two-and-a-half hours, this didn’t look like your average orientation session.

The preparation was tough. The meetings weren’t always fun. The final practice and materials were ready just hours before show time. It reminded me of the early Corporate Welcome days; nervous, risky and exciting. As with most new educational interventions, I think you must take a “ready-fire-aim” philosophy. It seemed to go well. Of course we had a list of things we want to improve for the next workshop. The evaluations will pave the way for the future of this inter-professional education session, both within the Corporate Welcome and along side other ROHCG education formats.

The message of this experience is that “when the right thing comes along, there’s always room for it.”

As per our blog policy - the opinions and comments in this article represent those of the author and should not be considered representative of the ROHCG.