Many congratulations to our IFIC Canada colleagues for hosting an inspiring conference in Calgary last month. I had the pleasure of representing Team Scotland along with Margaret Reid-Arbuckle, Director of Development, Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland, and Billy McClean, Head of Community Health and Care Services, South Ayrshire Partnership. We were all blown away by the breadth of the programme – so many ‘must do’ breakout sessions to choose from. The entire 3 day programme resonated with our context and challenges in Scotland, reminding me of the value of IFIC Scotland being able to look up and out for solutions beyond our nation. Walter Wodchis and Jodeme Goldhar, co-leads for IFIC Canada, served up solutions and inspiration in an outstanding and thoroughly enjoyable event.
The opening ceremony with Richard Lewanczuk, Senior Medical Director for Health System Integration for Alberta Health Services, and Harley Crowshoe, First Nation elder from the Piikani nation, grounded the event in a truly person-centred ethos of service and stewardship, for and with people and communities. This ethos continued throughout the three days with the voices of lived experience heard in almost every session. An example to aspire to in our own events. It was great to finally meet Phyliz Goh in person. Phyliz very ably chaired the patient and caregiver committee that orchestrated their tireless participation in the conference.
I was pleased to see the strong leadership from senior physicians in Canada for a shift from biomedical to relational practice. The message was clear that we make progress on integrated care at the rate of mutual respect and trust. It really is all about relationships……something we will take into our forthcoming event on Culture and Leadership for Integration, a joint event with the Scottish Government workforce team. As ever, it was wonderful to connect with fellow Senior Associates from Europe, New Zealand and the US. I was particularly pleased to continue our conversation on interprofessional and cross sector education to build capability for integrated practice.
On the second day I chaired three excellent joint SIG sessions. Flash reports with slides and recordings can be accessed here. Our first SIG workshop explored a public health approach to palliative and end of life care, featuring contributions from Scotland, Canada, IFIC Latin America and the US. I was fascinated by the anthropological approach adopted for the Death Week organised by Claudia Collado-Quezada with students and faculty from the University of Chile. Dr Chris Piromalli from the global ECHO partnerships reflected on his experience as a rural family physician and the impact on access to palliative care through democratising knowledge. Cheryl Cameron from the Canadian Virtual Hospice shared a fantastic array of online resources for patients, families and caregivers that can help realise our ambition to provide palliative care for all who need it.
Our second workshop explored self management and social prescribing supports for wellbeing. It kicked off with a thoughtful provocation from Jen Wilkie, drawing on many years of community development work in Ontario. Anna Prytherch and Sarah-Anne Munoz shared perspectives from rural and remote communities in Wales and Scotland, and Margaret Reid Arbuckle spoke about Scotland’s Self Management strategy, fund and reflective practice network.
Our third workshop was on Ageing in Place – a late night gig for Mark Harrington from Age Friendly Ireland and Aoife Dennis from ALONE who joined us online. We were joined by Dorothy Quon, VP Seniors and Health Services, Woodgreen, Toronto and by Olivia Chubey of Silvera for Seniors, Alberta. I was impressed by the reach and impact of these housing organisations to support people to age well in place and don’t think we do enough to involve the housing sector in our work. I also plan to follow up on interesting presentations from Canadian colleagues on the Oasis Ageing programme and the Northern Centre for Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities. Our own Billy McClean rounded off the session with an upbeat video that brought South Ayrshire’s Ageing Well strategy to life. Billy was clearly living his own Ageing Well strategy by starting his conference days with a 6am run!
The final plenary featured the new North American Centre for Integrated Care Excellence, a Knowledge Mobilisation & Impact Hub designed to build a vibrant pan Canada learning community or network. This ambitious initiative is supported by a cohort of locally embedded researchers funded by the Canadian Institute for Healthcare Research. I look forward to the outputs of this learning network - and hopefully some opportunities for collaboration.
Next up is the All-Ireland conference on integrated care in March 2025. We already have a number of Scottish abstracts submitted for IFICs international gathering in Lisbon, May 14-16. And watch this space for a possible IFIC Scotland event in the autumn……..
