As one might imagine, a tremendous depth of knowledge exists within the walls of Toronto Rehab that the education team is eager to share with a range of different stakeholders. "In everything we do, our ultimate goal is to help improve the lives of those who experience life-changing injuries and illness," says Lynne Sinclair, Toronto Rehab’s Director of Education.

Hospital staff
The Education team collaborates with Human Resources to ensure that Toronto Rehab employees have the very latest support, training and tools needed to deliver the very best level of patient care.

"We need to reach over 1,700 employees who work around-the-clock at all our sites," Lynne explains. One valuable means of connecting with employees is online or e-learning, which shows great promise in efficiently providing staff with the new information and skills they need to continually expand their clinical expertise.




Students
In addition to providing conventional educational placements to students in a range of rehabilitation related professions, Toronto Rehab has spent five years developing and implementing innovative approaches to clinical interprofessional education (IPE).

Toronto Rehab is one of 10 research and teaching hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area that are fully affiliated with the University of Toronto, and is the only one focused exclusively on adult rehabilitation.

Lynne explains that U of T’s Faculty of Medicine has shifted to a distributed model of education, enabling students in various health professions to gain educational experiences with community affiliated teaching hospitals and other community-based teaching and practice sites. Through the Toronto Academic Health Sciences Network (TAHSN), Toronto Rehab continues to play a pivotal role in interprofessional education (IPE), interprofessional collaboration (IPC), and research – both among TAHSN hospitals and elsewhere throughout Ontario.

"Thanks in part to our strong ties to the University of Toronto, we are proud to be a recognized leader in this emerging field of education," Lynne says. "Toronto Rehab strongly believes that interprofessional education and collaboration are the most effective means of positioning present and future rehab practitioners for success."

Practicing professionals
Through an extensive roster of local, national and international seminars, symposia and workshops, the hospital continues to create further opportunities for healthcare professionals – from Toronto and around the world – to get together to share knowledge and enhance their skills.

"Serving as an information and educational resource for those working in rehabilitation is an important part of the hospital’s mandate," Lynne says.


Patients and families
Providing information and motivation to patients and their families is a key way that Toronto Rehab helps ensure they keep moving forward after they leave the hospital. This kind of education happens each and every day in the interactions that patients have with hospital clinicians.

Says Lynne: "We strive to equip patients and families with the information they need to make more informed decisions about their own healthcare, and to help them play a more active role in adjusting to new circumstances or managing a chronic condition." (The Performance Highlights section below provides more details about Toronto Rehab’s specific educational initiatives for patients and their families).

Public education
Using a diverse range of media – its twice-yearly magazine and other publications, its website and an active media relations program – Toronto Rehab also provides the general public with information to help them prevent disabling injuries and illness. "The goal of this outreach," says Lynne, "is to help people make more informed decisions about their own healthcare, to take a more active role in their recovery and, in some cases, to assist them in adjusting to new circumstances or managing ongoing health issues."

For example, the hospital regularly hosts educational events in Toronto through its Living With Living Well series: events can be accessed in person or by live or archived webcasts.


Key successes in 2008/09

Throughout 2008/09, Toronto Rehab’s education team conducted a range of initiatives aimed at hospital staff. It hosted workshops for employees to enhance their learning and confidence as clinical faculty and as mentors to students and new staff, and created new workshops and sessions that align with changes in the academic curriculum and larger context. Finally, it collaborated with the Professional Excellence team in implementing continuing professional development (CPD) plans for all disciplines, creating competency-based plans for clinicians to advance their skills and knowledge in our clinical areas of excellence.

To further advance interprofessional education, Lynne Sinclair, the hospital’s IPE Leader and the Education Office Manager were seconded part-time for a second term to the Office of IPE, University of Toronto. Their task was to develop a strategic plan for clinical IPE, and to support an additional four clinical partners – Baycrest, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Mount Sinai Hospital and St. Joseph’s Health Centre-Family Health Team – in piloting IPE placements.

More generally, the hospital’s ongoing leadership and innovation in IPE helped prepare students and clinicians across the Greater Toronto Area to be collaborative, communicative, understanding of one another’s roles and clearly focused on the well-being of their patients. And all of this was accomplished at a time when the hospital was running six large IPE/IPC research grants!

Despite the challenging economic climate, the hospital remained actively involved in a number of educational initiatives aimed at practicing professionals, patients and their families, and the general public, as described in the Performance Highlights section below.


Looking ahead
"Overall, our goal is to continue developing new educational models and to establish Toronto Rehab as the state-of-the-art information and dissemination source for specialized adult rehabilitation knowledge and practice," Lynne says.

"Interprofessional education is a critical priority for us,"Lynne adds. "We are successfully bridging academic and clinical settings at TAHSN organizations to help IPE students become better collaborators and team members. Toronto Rehab will continue leveraging its work with the Office of IPE/University of Toronto, and we are in the midst of planning for the creation of a Centre for IPE at Toronto Rehab that will expand IPE opportunities to other healthcare partners across the province.

Whether educating staff, students, practicing professionals, patients and their families or the public-at-large, Toronto Rehab is dedicated to remaining on the forefront. "We will continue to raise the bar," Lynne concludes."There will always be more to discover, to learn and to share. Our organization is committed to doing what we can to share our discoveries both near and far. The bottom-line is we want to make a real difference in people’s lives."
 

Performance highlights

Staff

Initiative	Performance Highlights
E-learning system for staff and students	Launched E-Learning Centre on Sept 1, 2008 that has been incorporated into the employee orientation process with 80 percent compliance. First mandatory e-Learning course (Code Yellow) launched with over two-thirds of staff at three centres trained.

 

Students

Initiative	Performance Highlights
Enrich the clinical environment for students at Toronto Rehab	Exceeded our targets for student education placements with an increase from 614 in 2007/08 to 656 in 2008/09 (academic year). Nursing placements increased, while high numbers in other professions were maintained. 97 percent of students recommended Toronto Rehab as a placement in 2008/09, exceeding the target of 95 percent.
Provide continued leadership in interprofessional collaboration and education	IPE placements across Toronto Rehab’s clinical programs built upon previous years’ success, with 29 IPE placements covering 16 different professions. Successfully secured two new HealthForceOntario grants that complement two current IPE grants.

 

Practicing Professionals

Initiative	Performance Highlights
Showcase clinical best practices	Hosted the first ever Clinical Best Practice Workshop in March 2009 that provided clinicians with a ‘how-to’ introduction to defining and applying clinical best practices. The clinical best practice strategy behind this workshop was showcased by the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation CHSRF in its ‘Promising Practice in Research Use’ series as demonstrating improvement in using evidence in health care management, practice and policy.
Professional development events	Hosted 19 continuing professional development events that attracted approximately 2,000 professionals (above the target) from across Canada and the U.S., including the following events: Third national spinal cord symposium held in Toronto (the largest yet) Symposia on balance, mobility and fitness; mild traumatic brain injury; Alzheimer’s disease. A new four-city workshop on video fluoroscopic assessments 87 percent of attendees were satisfied with Toronto Rehab events and said we met or exceeded their learning objectives and expectations.
Continuing professional development of professionals and faculty for IPE	Education team participated in the Partnered Learning Project – a joint research study involving MSK Rehab and Neuro Rehab, as well as Sick Kids and the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario – that was funded by HealthForceOntario and which contributed to evidence-based models linking interprofessional collaboration (IPC) and education.

 

Patients and Families

Initiative	Performance Highlights
Patient and family education	Continued to make progress on three education demonstration projects in carefully selected priority areas: Spinal Cord Injury Resource Centre: Hospital’s Spinal Cord Rehab program collaborated with the Canadian Paraplegic Association Ontario to integrate patient and family education, targeting inpatients and outpatients at Toronto Rehab ‘s Lyndhurst Centre as well as clients of CPAO. Physical resource centre is in operation; electronic resource centre in development. Complex Continuing Care: Caregiver Support Groups & Peer Mentoring Support Programs in operation. Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation: Patient & Family Navigator being developed.
Cardiac rehab alumni program	Launched Heart Health for Life, an engagement, education and peer support group for graduates of our Cardiac Rehabilitation and Secondary Prevention Program that is sponsored by Scotiabank. The goal is to help graduates maintain their heart healthy ways once they leave Toronto Rehab, thereby helping prevent another acute care episode.

Public

Initiative	Performance Highlights
Public education resources	Continued to develop and disseminate information about rehabilitation in general and injury/illness prevention, rehabilitation and recovery. Cultivated new and leveraged existing partnerships to host seven Living With Living Well public educational events, which receive satisfaction ratings of 92 percent from attendees.