Dr. Lucas Chartier: Actioning Safety by Learning from Harm
(Access show transcript) Being an Emergency Physician, Vice President of Quality & Safety, and Chief Patient Officer is no small feat, yet Dr. Lucas Chartier from UHN wears all three hats with passion and purpose.
Summary
HIROC’s inaugural episode of Share Scale Repeat kicks off by spotlighting a topic all healthcare organizations have a keen eye on - how to action safety. Our guest Dr. Lucas Chartier from the University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto taps into his physician and quality & safety expert lens to offer his perspective. We talk about learning from harm, creating purposeful safety projects, and the impact of a just reporting culture.
One of his key messaging includes the importance of sharing widely not only what has worked for your organization, but what hasn’t worked, proving that our healthcare system is stronger when we share, scale, and repeat.
Stay tuned until the end of the episode to hear about Dr. Chartier’s go-to method for reducing stress, and three words he would use to describe his team. Trevor and Abi also chat more about HIROC’s Safety Grants Program!
Mentioned in this Episode
Transcript
Even the smallest idea can spark big change. At HIROC, we see it every day, with organizations across Canada finding new ways to create the safest healthcare system. On Share Scale Repeat, we talk through some complex topics in healthcare, interviewing the brains behind the projects that are keeping Canadians safe. We are doing this so you can find ways to scale the information where you work, because safety can't happen in silos.
Abi Sivakumar: Welcome, everyone, to our first episode of Share Scale Repeat. I'm so excited to be doing this with my colleague, Trevor. On this podcast, you can expect to hear trends in healthcare safety, what we're learning from HIROC's work, including our Safety Grants program, and we'll cover some tough but much needed to talk about topics. On today's episode, we're going to talk a bit about a few key quality and safety things. Can you give us a teaser, Trevor?
Trevor Hall: Yeah. Thanks so much, Abi, for this opportunity. Really at some point, all of us, or someone we love or know will need to seek care and go to the emergency department. Just think, over 15 million emergency department visits in Canada in 2024. We know that healthcare is a complex socio-technical system, and we know with all complex systems there's lots of interconnection and variance. What this means is things happen. Harm can happen.
Today we have a very special conversation about safety action in the emergency department and in healthcare in general. We speak to Dr. Lucas Chartier, who is the vice president of quality and safety, the chief patient safety officer at University Health Network, as well as an emergency department physician, and a clinical investigator and professor with the University of Toronto.
Our systems are safe. Questions we ask, are they safe today? Are they safe tomorrow? We have a commitment to safety.
Emergency departments account for a small percentage of medical-legal claims. We know that when harm does occur, it is extremely important to ensure that we are committed, and able to understand and learn from this harm and to action safety. As an example, we know from real outcomes that wrong diagnosis and proper treatment, delayed or admitted procedures, failure to appreciate status changes or deteriorating conditions. The idea of, "Hey, did I recognize that something is happening? And did I equally of importance, did I do something about it?" We know that falls are areas of safety concerns specifically within the emergency department. We will explore current safety considerations, we'll share on areas of where we are creating safety action, and we'll provide considerations on learning harm. Most importantly, we're going to talk about how we are partnering to create the safest healthcare systems, highlight HIROC Safety Grants of how this is safety in action, and it's really about understanding, creating and evaluating. Most importantly, it's all about how we share, scale and repeat.
Abi Sivakumar: Yeah, thanks for giving our listeners an overview, Trevor. And what topics can listeners expect for our upcoming episodes?
Trevor Hall: Super exciting. Again, this podcast is about discovery. It's about things we don't always talk about in healthcare. We seek to understand, explore complex topics and safety such as today's going to the emergency department. We'll talk about considerations in obstetrical and perinatal care, such as having a baby. Complex topics within mental health and risk considerations on things we don't always share about death by suicidal while under care. Most importantly, we aim to showcase safety action. HIROC Safety Grants and these podcasts around partnering to create the safest healthcare systems.
Abi Sivakumar: Welcome, Dr. Chartier. Thank you for joining us on our inaugural episode of Share Scale Repeat. We're so excited to have you on and to kick off this podcast.
Dr. Lucas Chartier: Well, thanks for having me today. Privilege to be the first one.
Abi Sivakumar: Glad to. So, starting off with an easy question to warm you up, what was your first job ever?
Dr. Lucas Chartier: Oh, my first job ever. I guess my first official job, I did do some landscaping for family and friends. I don't know if that qualifies. My first real job was as a camp counselor in my teenage years working in the city-run camp, and did this actually for a number of years. Then went through a few different roles there, and I think it was a good match for my energy desire to work with people, and to try to mentor people and get some younglings to become good people. It was a great job, actually. Thanks for asking. That's a fun opening question.
Abi Sivakumar: And fast-forward to what you do now. For our listeners who may not know you, where do you work and what's your motivation for getting out the door each and every day?
Dr. Lucas Chartier: I work at the University Health Network, UHN, which is in downtown Toronto. We're a healthcare organization with a few different sites, covering a lot of acute and post-acute care. And I work primarily as the vice president of quality and safety. And I also am an emergency physician by trade and by background, and I still work clinically every week. And my motivation for getting out of the house, I mean the real reason is the kids. If I don't get out of the house then they won't get out of the house, and that's a big problem for everybody. But I guess perhaps the reason you're looking for a bit more professionally, I'm lucky to work with a lot of really interesting people who are at the top of their field. And we're trying and sometimes even succeeding, tackling some pretty complex problems to try to make care safer and better for our patients in our system. And I find it pretty stimulating and exciting, and trying to do this better and better every day it's, I think, what gets me out the door.
Abi Sivakumar: And if you can change one thing in the emergency department tomorrow with the snap of your fingers, what would it be?
Dr. Lucas Chartier: To be completely honest, if I were to change one thing for the emergency department, it probably wouldn't be within the emergency department, if that makes sense. And the reason I'm saying this is that I feel like in a lot of the roles that I've had, whether for quality, safety or emergency departments, I would really love, honestly would, to make myself irrelevant and unnecessary to the system and to society. If I could, with obviously the arrest of my colleagues, make it so safe and so good in our departments and in our hospital that we don't need to focus on quality and safety because it's just so ingrained in what everybody does always, all the time, then I'd love this.
And same for the emergency department. If I didn't need to be there in the middle of the night like I was last weekend to help people because they have other ways of getting the care that they need better access, better availability, better expectations from their providers, their assistants, and they didn't need to come to the emergency department, that would be a win-win for me, for us, certainly for the patients. And so, if I could change one thing, it'd be that we are not as needed as we are right now as a safety net for our population.
Trevor Hall: I find that fascinating, Lucas, around the design of the system. How do we actually go about creating safe systems? Are our systems safe today? Are they safe tomorrow? And as you mentioned, the interconnection of how healthcare is all together, and how it is dependent of how we seek access, and making sure that the expectation of care there and how do we open it up. It adds a lot to what I was thinking for today really, is that when we speak about safety, we really have spent the last couple decades describing safety. So, this has happened because of this or when we look at this, this is something to think about. One of the most difficult things that I find in my practices is, how do you achieve action? Is there safety action? And how do you make that happen?
I'm wondering, being a safety scientist, a clinician, a senior leader, can you maybe share and talk about a project that you're focused on right now that's focused on safety action?
Dr. Lucas Chartier: Great question. I think you hit the nail on the head with the action piece. I mean humans are always resistant to change into action. It's within our nature, but especially in healthcare. In a post-pandemic world where we have a more junior workforce that's been trained differently with different expectations, they are burnt out to be quite honest with you. And it is difficult for them sometimes to just get out the door to the first question and to come to work. And so, to ask them to do things is always, and perhaps even more so these days, challenging. And I'll add one more layer to that is to change and to act on a prospective future-oriented manner. Sometimes when we have events or issues that happen to us, or to our system or patients, we react and we think about how to change. And that's important of course, but it'd be even better if we could do this ahead of time before harm or issues were to occur.
So, I mean there's a number of ways in which we're trying to do this here at UHN. And I'll tell you maybe one that I think has a lot of promise, to my point, on a future-oriented manner, and it's on the topic of communication between providers. We call this TOAI, transfer of accountability and information. That's when we have patients who move between parts of the system. And by part, I mean a different location in a different unit or a different site and hospital between different nurses, or different doctors, or nurse practitioner, or physiotherapist. And so, essentially moving alongside the system, it's one continuous journey for the patient and their loved ones, but for the system, there are discrete episodes and events. And every one of those blocks, if I were to use that analogy, needs to really be embedded within the one before and after. Otherwise we're going to have some gaps.
And so, what we're trying to do is to develop some policy, some protocols to be able to educate and to train all of our providers to do this better, recognizing that education is only going to get us so far. And so, we're trying to leverage technology and some tools, whether it's our electronic medical record. We are trialing with some generative AI tools, how we can do this better, so that we can capture really the essence of what is going on with these patients at this time, understanding what has happened to them before and what may happen to them in the near and longer term future, than to be able to have this as continuous of a journey for them as possible from a transition of accountability and information perspective.
Trevor Hall: Right on. So, this idea around transfer of accountability, information and communication. So, perhaps we may be a bit young, but the telephone game ,is that when clinician says something to a person, it goes to the next, goes to the next, and by the end is completely different than what it started with. You mentioned around the importance of policy, and procedure and education. And I like what you said around just not stopping there though, is that we know that we're humans. Humans make mistakes. And how do we support that human in the design of healthcare? Yeah, I'd love to hear, perhaps you could expand a little bit more on leveraging technology and the medical record, the electronic medical record and how that aids into ensuring the right information at the right time for the clinician.
Dr. Lucas Chartier: Yeah, I love the analogy of the telephone game. I don't think that I had used quite that one, but if that's okay with you, I'm going to steal it and give you credit for it.
Trevor Hall: Oh, no credit needed.
Dr. Lucas Chartier: I don't know. I mean that's fine. I think you deserve it. I think you didn't invent the game, but I think to put it in that sphere I think is exactly what happens. It's interesting. Literally just before our discussion now, I had a call with my chief information officer at our hospital to discuss exactly this. How can we leverage some new tools, and AI and technologies that sound interesting and fancy, without distracting from what they are, which is a tool to support the human connection and interaction that we have? And that's, to be quite honest, my biggest concern is that there's such a hype over some of those technologies and tools that we sometimes forget that if we put the tool ahead of the people, and it don't even mean the patients or the provider's, just the humans within that ecosystem, then we're going to start relying on that technology a little bit more, which we know has limitations. We know the way it was developed, perhaps has the same biases that we've inputted into the models ourselves, which is a big problem we need to be aware of.
And over time, and I mentioned earlier, our more junior workforce that hasn't had the same training through a pandemic as they may have had before, if we rely too much on technology, it is perhaps going to be to our detriment when that technology will eventually fail. It's not perfect.
I will give you one more analogy. My car is old enough that it doesn't have a rear-view camera. So I'm relatively decent still at parking in parallel, or at least as most folks we are. But what I know is that whenever I get in a car with people who haven't had the chance to practice without a rear-view camera, if that camera goes bad or the weather's bad, they can't parallel park. They need to rely on this technology. And that's a bit of a problem when you're parking, that's a lot more of a problem when you're talking about patients and their healthcare of course. And so, that's the one thing that worries me with technology. We need to adapt it and certainly I think I'm an early adopter, but we need to do it well and intelligently, otherwise we're going to have some big misses, and that's what worries me.
Trevor Hall: Yeah, no, right on. I love that. I too am also a bit of a Luddite with car. I try to keep the screens out of the car. I think the human factors mindset around the distractions as we drive I think is absolutely critical, especially as we're putting more technology into it. I love the fact that you're seeing it a parallel parking. Yeah, I don't know. That's a skill that people aren't good at, especially in a downtown Toronto situation.
But if you put that over what you're saying in the emergency department, emergency departments aren't calm. There's certain moments that they may be organized calmness, but there's also a lot of energy and excitement, a lot of real experiences that happen.
And I love what you're saying around how do we use technology to support the person? And I think that's absolutely key. And I think that perhaps that's something why we may be a little bit more traditional in our thought in healthcare, is how do we make sure that we're supporting humans? Humans make mistakes. Great. But how do we use technology and other systems and processes to enable humans to do better or to be more able to optimize their performance?
I love what you were saying around your commitment to learning from harm. And that's something that really has stuck it with me as we've talked over the years. One thing that we had a chance to connect on, a little bit over a year ago with you and team UHN was around learning from harm or learning from safety instance. I think you're doing some really fascinating work where you're talking about employing machine learning techniques and really the idea about how can we learn? How can we best design our systems for harm? I'm wondering if you might be able to share a little bit about on how best in your opinion can we learn from harm?
Dr. Lucas Chartier: So, I think the project you're referring to, maybe I'll give a bit of context for the listeners, is one in which we are trying to augment the humans again to be able to use technology to pick up on things that we may not have had before. And so, the ecosystem in which we work is that a harm sometimes occurs to patient, unfortunately. And sometimes there's something that we call near misses, something that could have been risky and problematic, but thankfully we caught it through vigilance and through highly skilled individuals. And these events lead to safety event reports. Essentially we have at UHN, a very good reporting culture where our providers feel safe reporting incidents. Even though they may be the ones who were at the center of that near miss, they recognize that it is the system and the environment that led to a large extent to that event happening or not happening.
And so, we have literally thousands of safety events being reported each year. Again, not because we're not safe, but because we want to learn from them. And because there's so many of them, there's no single human who's able to put it all together to be able to learn from them. And similarly, there's no way to put it into a Word document and do a word search on different ways in which we need to learn things. And so, we need to augment a little bit by using, to your point, machine learning and natural language processing, some AI that essentially we'll look for themes, we'll look for patterns, we'll look for locations. And one example when we did that pilot about a year ago was diets. So, the types of food that patients get. Of course there's a big element of patient experience and satisfaction that will go with the type of diet, how much and what it is, and how warm, and is it tasty given that it can have salt and sugar, and multiple different things based on different medical conditions.
But what was our surprise is that the diet, and the texture, and when it's happening and who's ordering actually was leading to some adverse event to our patients. And so, that was something that was really interesting and we then were able, to your point earlier on action, partner with our dietary group to be able to think about how can we better understand these reports, how can we discuss with our stakeholders and eventually be able to make some tweaks and some changes?
How can we best learn from harm? I think that's a big, big philosophical question and probably could talk about it for a while. But at a high level, what I'll say is we need to be vigilant. We need to have an open, just reporting culture so that again, to my point earlier, if people don't report these near misses, then there's no way we're going to know where the pockets of potential harm are and where we need to focus to be able to act before harm actually occurs.
And then we need to have some real experts, and again, lucky to have many working with me here, in the methodologies and the quality improvement science, to be able to not just go to education, to my point earlier, it's certainly necessary. It's not sufficient though to be able to improve on care. We need to leverage technology, we need to use policies and automation and computerization, enforcing function, all along what we call the hierarchy of intervention effectiveness, essentially using tools that are going to be able to nudge the providers into doing the easy thing, which is the right thing, as opposed to expecting them to remember everything all at once.
Trevor Hall: Yeah, I love so much of what you have just said. So, if I break it down a little bit, and maybe for the listeners just to raise your hand, hopefully you're not driving. One piece is, Hey, are you human? Yeah, I'm raising my hand. Two, have you ever made a mistake in your life? Yeah, absolutely I make a mistake. One question that we ask is, do you like to make a mistake? Or do you like to share about making a mistake? Normally we know humans make mistakes. A lot of the times we have great research out there saying, you know what? I don't always like to share. And mostly people don't like to share about mistakes, specifically in a professional setting such as working within healthcare, or academics or otherwise.
And I think if we couple that with, hey, we know that healthcare is complex. It's a complex socio-technical system, meaning there's lots of interconnection, there's lots of variance. So, if we put those things together as one, we're all humans. Humans make mistakes. Two, we don't generally like to talk about our mistakes. And three, we work in a dangerous industry. And I think when we put that together, Lucas, it really comes to my mind around this idea of if we need to feel safe, we need to be a team, we need to be able to speak up about things when variances happen. And really we need to move away from this idea that it's the humans that's the cause of the error. It's for discussion, but I really feel it's the system and not the human that is the concern.
I think one of the best things that I'm hearing from this conversation from you is really when we talk to people or when I talk to people about safety, it still comes across as you know what? It's about error. And error is described in these ways. This happened at this time with this amount and given in this circumstance. But what I'm hearing from you, it's about a shift to harm. It's about how do we actually learn from harm? And it's about how are we designing for the human? And I think that is absolutely something that's just remarkably amazing and critical to our conversation, and I thank you for that. And it's a great example of how you're saying who would've thought that diet and the way in which we're prescribing diet would contribute to choking or are other pieces within the system? So, I think that's absolutely remarkable.
I think as we're nearing a little bit of time here, Lucas, I think I'm fascinated by the fact, by your energy, by your commitment to healthcare and how you started by saying, "You know what? I would love for safety to be so prominent that my role as a chief patient safety officer is irrelevant if not needed." As we go through the experiences that you build, so that green sack of ideas that you've built over your career, I'm wondering, we're all patients, we're all consumers of healthcare, if not ourselves, are loved ones or others, have sought care in emergency department at some point or other. As a safety scientist and emergency department physician, a senior leader of one of the best hospitals in the world, is there a piece of advice that you may have for our listeners on advocating for yourself or loved ones when you are visiting the hospital?
Dr. Lucas Chartier: I'll preface my answer by saying that this should certainly not be on the shoulders of patients, and their caregivers and loved ones to feel like they're the ones who need to create the environment or to advocate for themselves where they feel safe and they are safe. And there's still a lot of work that we are doing and that we need to do as a community to make this more of a receptive environment, where people feel like it is okay to advocate and to speak up, despite the limitations, and the barriers, and the power differential that may exist within different environments, cultures, and certainly in healthcare. So, I just want to make sure that all the listeners understand that this is bidirectional, I think, approach.
What I will say regarding advocating for oneself is really for people to trust their gut and to respectfully raise it. And perhaps one part that I think may be actually very helpful is to explain why they're concerned and they're advocating or raising up an issue. And certainly to your point earlier, we're all humans and there's imperfect situations, and environments, and interactions. What I think is really helpful is when patients, certainly as a provider, when I hear them say it, why is it that they're asking a question? Sometimes I'll ask explicitly because I think it helps me answer their question or alleviate their fear better.
And I'll give you an example from a recent interaction. I had a younger patient who came in with some palpitations. Through a history, and a physical and some investigations, it became clear that what they were suffering from was a panic attack. And we had a discussion. And that individual said, "Am I going to have a heart attack, Doc?" And the easy answer would've been for me to say, "Well, no, of course not. You are young, you have no risk factors and you're not having a heart attack." But instead, I asked them why they were asking this question. And the reason they were was because they had a distant family member who had had a sudden cardiac death while playing sports, something that some of the listeners may have heard of as a condition that's extremely rare, but obviously extremely scary.
Now, this individual did not have a direct risk factor for this condition, nor was their story aligned with this. But for me to understand this was actually extremely helpful to then be able to alleviate their fears that this wasn't what was going on, and that their current symptoms were in no way linked to this pretty scary pathology. And I think was a much better outcome for this person's reassurance than if I had just either dismissed them, I guess, or just answer generically that this wasn't the case. And so, again, I think from an advocacy or self-advocacy perspective, certainly having people explain why they're concerned about something will help their providers to be able to target that fear concern. And sometimes it is actually a completely real concern that needs to be escalated, and explained, and discussed and investigated. But I think that discussion can be much more fruitful by having this back and forth conversation.
Trevor Hall: I love that. And I think it goes back to some of the initial stories and experiences you were sharing around communication. Communication and setting context is so important. I think what our listeners, and clinicians, and leaders, all the frontline, and patients and others, I think it's this idea that we all are consumers and we all have the partnership and the ability to speak up. And I think that that's absolutely key. I think your understanding of presenting the why is something that is important, is this is why I am speaking up, this is why I'm feeling this way. And I love the additional piece, especially in today's experiences where you mentioned respectfully asking why. And I think that's so critical.
And some of our listeners may not be aware of violence against healthcare professionals, is that one of its most challenging times. And we all come to work to do good not to harm. And I think collectively we have the responsibility together to, as Lucas mentioned, speak up and ask why, but in a respectful manner. Lucas, I think this is absolutely fantastic advice. I think from a safety perspective, it ties into what you're saying around learning from harm, too. So, from some of the risk outcome data that we know is that cardiac events as you mentioned, or falls or some of the things that we do see within an emergency department context and how do we learn from those? So, I think this idea of partnering together to create the safest healthcare systems is absolutely critical, and getting these conversations out is key.
Abi Sivakumar: And switching gears just a bit, we know healthcare teams benefit from grants to do this important safety work you're talking about. Why is partnering with other organizations through grant work important to your team at UHN?
Dr. Lucas Chartier: That's a good question. I think there's probably a number of factors, and my own answer would be different than that of my team. I think there is a greater good. I'm not trying to be a little bit too optimistic here, but I think there's something about partnering with other organizations and feeling that you're solving bigger problems for more people. And I think there's a lot of fulfillment in doing that. I think that people get a lot of personal satisfaction within their work, which then drives them to be able to do it even better and longer, which is really important these days in healthcare. And I think that from an intellectual, or cognitive or academic perspective, I find it very interesting to be able to contribute to the field.
And if we figure out something here at UHN, why should we wait for somebody else elsewhere in Ontario or out of their country to figure out the exact same thing? If we can help them learn something, including things that we did that didn't work well and that they shouldn't waste their time and resources doing, then why shouldn't we do this? And as a community, I'd love to learn from others and to not replicate bad ideas, but instead do the good ones. So, let's do this together. And I think grants and academic scholarly dissemination are certainly one of the many ways in which we're trying to do this year at UHN.
Abi Sivakumar: Yeah, I love that. And it ties right back into our title, share scale, repeat, which is what UHN is doing, and that's great. Okay, Dr. Chartier. We know you're busy and you have to get back to work, but we would be remiss if we didn't ask you about your top 20 under 40 Canadian life Sciences award. Congratulations. This was just announced in April. Part of this is for your work in mentoring colleagues to identify areas of improvement and challenge the status quo. What does this kind of mentorship look like to you on a day-to-day basis?
Dr. Lucas Chartier: Well, first of all, thank you for this. It's always nice to be recognized by peers or colleagues. And to be quite honest, the nicest thing about this award has been the friends and colleagues who I haven't spoken to in a while who reach out and say, "Hey, how are you? Congrats. Let's go for coffee." And now I have more coffees to schedule than I have time for, which is obviously a good problem to have. I think probably this mentorship question goes back, funny enough, to the first job question that you asked me at the top, which is about helping people unlock something in their brain, in their abilities, in their ideas, and the spark that you see in their eyes being, as I said, a camp counselor, or track and field coach, or a snowboard instructor, or mat tutor or being a parent now, I think probably the ultimate form of mentorship. I think that this is what has driven me to continue to do that. I just honestly get a lot of satisfaction in doing so.
And what it means. I think it means being available. It means being there for people to feel that they can reach out because if they don't, then I may never know that I could help them to be transparent with what I know and what I don't know, my own biases and limitations, and being vulnerable in explaining what I've done well and what I haven't done well, and where their interest and expertise may overlap.
And to really just, again, it goes back to that human connection honestly. I think it goes back to having a chat, having a coffee, having this interaction, and trying to be genuinely curious about these people who sometimes are seeking my help and mentorship and expertise. And honestly, and I don't say this just to be cheesy, but I probably do get more out of it, certainly from a human perspective, than they realize or that they get out of me. And that's why I'm going to keep doing this hopefully forever. And the more I accumulate errors, the more I accumulate good things to say to people about not to do, and hopefully that's valuable to them. So, yeah, I love doing this. I am hoping to keep doing that.
Abi Sivakumar: Yeah, that's amazing. Mentorship, like you mentioned, can be so life-changing to many, so I'm glad you're painting a picture for our listeners of what it could look like and sharing the importance of it. And at the start of the talk, you mentioned how you pride yourself on being an early adopter. So, what advice would you give to other healthcare professionals to be more open to trying new things, including being open to new perspectives and in different perspectives?
Dr. Lucas Chartier: Well, that's a great question. I don't know that I'm going to do this question justice. I think it goes back to being willing to try and to fail. I mean, early innovators, the majority, we don't hear from them because what they're innovating or what they're adopting just isn't working. And that's okay. We need these visionaries to be able to create the next generation of iPhone or whatever it is that they're going to develop. We wouldn't have most of what we have in life without these things. So, I guess what I'd say to a lot of my colleagues is you don't need to be the innovator. Most of us probably don't have it inside of us, and that's okay. You probably don't even need to be the early adopter. But please get out of the way. Don't put up hurdles just for the sake of putting up hurdles because it's scary, because it's different, and because it could potentially fail.
Now, I'm not advocating for being reckless. And certainly there needs to be the right legal, and privacy and ethical guardrails to all that we do. But there are some ways in which we need to accept that some people will innovate, and adopt and do things differently. And our job, and sometimes that's my job, is just to get out of their wake, to try something small in a safe way and see what happens. And if it works, amazing. And if it doesn't, that's okay. It can't always work. We'll do it again next week with something else.
Abi Sivakumar: Yeah, I love that answer of at least not getting in the way of others who are trying to be open and try new things. And before we let you go, a few easy questions to end off. What's your go-to method for reducing stress?
Dr. Lucas Chartier: I think biking is probably. Or physical exercise maybe more generally, but biking is my exercise of choice. I did bike in this morning, a little bit cold, very windy. But it's really hard to be too stressed about life when you're trying to avoid crazy cars in downtown Toronto. So, I think that's probably the best way to get my mind off of anything else that's worrying me at the time.
Abi Sivakumar: Yeah, biking is a good one. And what do you value most in your closest friendships?
Dr. Lucas Chartier: Oh, that's a good question. Acceptance? I don't know. I mean, honestly, I probably need to think more about this. I just want to accept me for who I am, hopefully the many goods and the fewer bads, and to be able to have a good time together through this crazy thing called life.
Abi Sivakumar: Yes, acceptance is a great one. And if you had to describe your team in three words, what would they be?
Dr. Lucas Chartier: Wow. They are innovative, they challenge the status quo, and they are collaborative. Perhaps I should have put this as the first one actually. They are people who really will partner across the spectrum and through all of the organization and out of it to be able to work together. And I value this enormously in my teams and in my colleagues. So, they're amazing, they're innovative, and perhaps most importantly, they're collaborative.
Abi Sivakumar: I'm sure your team will be happy to hear the words you described them with. That's great. And yeah, well, thank you so much for joining us on this special episode, Dr. Chartier. Trevor and I enjoyed chatting with you and I personally learned so much. We really appreciate it.
Dr. Lucas Chartier: Well, it's honestly been my pleasure and it's been fun. So, thank you for having me, and I look forward to listening to your future episodes as well.
Abi Sivakumar: That was a great conversation with Dr. Chartier. Trevor, before we go, I'm going to ask you a question. For HIROC, this healthcare safety and risk management work our subscribers are doing is supported by the HIROC Foundation Safety Grants program. For those who don't know it, can you give an elevator pitch on the grants and how our subscribers can learn more about it?
Trevor Hall: A huge thanks to the HIROC brokerage, to our board of directors and to the HIROC Foundation. This is super exciting work. It's about partnering to create the safest healthcare systems. It's about safety action. As we heard from this conversation today. HIROC partners on safety innovations, applied work where we really do work together hand in hand looking at how to create the safest healthcare systems. There's so much good that has been and done so much believing in good, which is amazing. And the most important piece about this is learning. Learning and sharing together. How do we share, scale and repeat? For more information on the HIROC Safety Grants, please go to hiroc.com/aboutus/safetygrantsprogram.
Thanks for listening. For more interviews, be sure to follow our show wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, please rate and review the show. If healthcare innovation is your thing, check out HIROC's award-winning leadership podcast, Health Care Changemakers. And don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn to see the latest news in risk, safety, insurance, and more. Share Scale Repeat is recorded by HIROC's communications and marketing team and produced by Podfly Productions. Have a question? Email us at [email protected]. Until next time.