It is an honour to be a recipient of the CSIM Osler Award.  I acknowledge that any of my accomplishments were only achieved through the innovative and collaborative efforts  with my colleagues at Michael Garron Hospital (MGH) and with our community partners. I have been an internist for thirty years, doing my undergraduate training at the University of Ottawa and my specialty training in Toronto. I live in the community and can ride my bike to work; both of my daughters were born at MGH. I consider it an honour and privilege to have served this community as the Chief of Medicine at MGH. As an experienced internal medicine physician and educator, I have developed many programs and led multiple patient QA/QI projects that have improved patient care and outcomes for our community. I believe that the current and future success of MGH is dependent on developing integrated care systems where patient centered care, medical quality and patient safety provide the perspectives through which we practice, educate and research. 

We serve a large diverse urban multicultural population where over fifty languages are spoken; with a high proportion of new Canadians many with poor social determinants of health. We have seen our organization evolve to be a community academic hospital that has emerged through Covid as a provincial leader in providing integrated care with our Ontario Health Team community partners.  Two silver linings of the pandemic include the accelerated development of virtual care modalities and collaborations with our Family Physician  Network and fifty community partners. Through these efforts, MGH has created an integrated health system for East Toronto.  An additional silver lining was the dramatic increase in clinicians engaged many for the first time in pandemic planning; highlighting the importance and value of clinicians engagement in administrative/leadership  activities. Mentoring and watching leaders emerge are some of the greatest pleasures of my tenure as Chief of Medicine. One of my greatest concerns moving forward is the collision of the pandemic tail with the pre-existing burnout epidemic and how this has dramatically impacted the well-being of our healthcare workers (HCWs).

Burnout is a pressing prevalent quality care issue and how we support our HCWs will define our organization and us as individuals. Optimistically, the pandemic has brought to the forefront the importance of our workforce well-being and provides a unique opportunity for a lasting change in how health care organizations support their HCWs.