Clinician Fellowship in Health Care Quality

The Clinician Fellowship in Health Care Quality program supports the development of clinician leaders as part of our mandate to build capability and expertise for patient safety and quality within BC’s health care system. It develops clinicians’ leadership skills required to deliver improvements in the quality of care while fostering a growing network of leaders to further promote a culture of improvement throughout the system.

About the Fellowship

The Clinician Fellowship in Health Care Quality offers an integrated learning experience for physicians and nurse practitioners. Fellows will bring forward an improvement project related to one of our Health Quality BC priority areas and will take part in activities to advance their project aims. This includes attending stakeholder meetings; supporting the dissemination and publication of key findings; contributing their clinical and academic expertise and learning from a dynamic team with diverse backgrounds.

Fellows also receive mentorship from experienced clinical and administrative leaders who have led large-scale improvement efforts in the health-care system.

Fellows are embedded in our team for a full year, working alongside our staff and clinical leads on initiatives focused on health-care quality. They take part in decision-making processes and strategies while gaining exposure to different aspects of health-care administration, improvement science, and stakeholder engagement.

Framed within a customized learning plan, fellows will engage in a mix of formal and informal activities to build their network of scholars, researchers, and senior leaders in the health system. In doing so, fellows will build improvement skills as well as leadership, change management and organizational awareness that are important to implementing sustainable change.

Applications are now closed.

Timeline & Application Process

Fellowship Applications & Selection: June to July
To apply, send us a current CV and cover letter (max. of 1,000 words) outlining:

• motivation for applying
• relevant career goals; and
• Health Quality BC initiative(s) of interest.

Shortlisted applicants will be contacted to arrange an interview. All applicants will be notified of their application outcome once the fellows for this year are selected.

Fellowship Commences: Successful applicants start their fellowship in September 2023. For future years, please contact ssy@bcpsqc.ca.

The Fellowship Experience

Objectives

The fellowship supports physicians and nurse practitioners to build knowledge, skills and confidence to:

• Design, plan and implement quality and safety initiatives in health care;
• Create and strengthen networks and relationships with leaders in quality across BC, Canada and internationally;
• Build working knowledge of system re-design, quality improvement, role of policy in advancing quality and implementation science; and
• Navigate the complexities of engaging and leading change across organizations

Who Should Apply?

The fellowship program is open to physicians and nurse practitioners that are practicing in BC and is best suited for early-career clinicians with a demonstrated interest in improving the quality of care. Ideal applicants will have some understanding and involvement in improvement initiatives and/or formal training in quality improvement through programs such as the Clinician Quality Academy, Physician Quality Improvement or IHI Improvement Advisor initiatives. Paramount will be an interest in becoming a leader of large-scale initiatives to improve the quality of care.

Areas of Focus

A key part of matching potential applicants to fellowship opportunities is identifying initiatives that are aligned with our strategic objectives. Some examples of potential areas include:

Effective Mental Health and Substance Use Care
We’re supporting efforts to increase access to effective care for opioid use disorder in primary and acute care settings, focusing on increased initiation and maintenance of appropriate treatment and support in communities across BC.

Reduce potentially inappropriate use of antipsychotics in long-term care

In 2023-24, we will launch an improvement collaborative that aims to reduce potentially inappropriate use of antipsychotics in participating long-term care homes for residents without a diagnosis of psychosis.

Reduce morbidity and mortality associated with sepsis

Continuing our focus on sepsis care in BC, we provide mechanisms for enhancing knowledge translation and accelerating sepsis improvement work across the province, with an aim of reducing morbidity and mortality associated with sepsis.

Advance a culture of safety and learning for patient safety
We’re interested in using a data-driven approach to better understand where there are gaps in patient safety across the province. Then, in collaboration with subject matter experts, we will identify promising techniques to address them.

Improve Planetary Health in health service delivery
Providing high-quality clinical care, while accounting for and decreasing its environmental costs, is a necessary step forward to ensure an environmentally sustainable health system. We are looking for ways to advance clinical practice changes to simultaneously improve quality of care and reduce the carbon footprint associated with care delivery.

Commitment & Funding

Physician fellows are compensated at the sessional rate defined in the Physician Master Agreement for two sessions per week, and other clinicians will be funded at an hourly rate for up to 7.5 hours per week. This is equivalent to one day per week dedicated to fellowship activities and we anticipate that there will be flexibility in the scheduling of this time. It will also be adjusted based on the needs of the initiative to which they are contributing, clinical schedules and other personal and professional commitments.

Expenses such as conference attendance, travel related to fellowship activities and professional development opportunities will be funded by Health Quality BC.