VPSA has made great strides in encouraging physician engagement within the Vancouver Community of Care over the last few years, but there is always room for improvement.

We have been reviewing ways to support moving our association forward—things that will increase engagement and attendance of members on VPSA committees as well as decrease barriers for emerging ideas. Over the summer, Dr. York Hsiang, VPSA’s new managing director, members of the executive, and staff members have looked at ways to have our activities further reflect the interests and views of the medical staff. In consultation with the SSC, our funder, we are looking to reinvigorate our Engagement Working Group (EWG; our “cabinet”) and have it function as a steering committee for the association and to help guide VPSA’s activities.

Our aim is to move away from committees and sub-committees and towards a task group model that will operationalize decisions made by the EWG. Literature tells us using task groups can add value to organizations such as ours. We know your time is valuable and we have learned that you often prefer to contribute to advancing a project for a discrete amount of time rather than have a standing commitment.

With this in mind, we are adopting a task group model that is nimble and responsive to the EWG’s goals and objectives. This model will also allow for a low-barrier emergence of initiatives and projects. Examples of past VPSA initiatives that followed a task group process and structure include the group that worked on creating the Physician Hub for Engagement and Wellness (PHEW), the Appreciative Inquiry process that addressed diversity in medical leadership, and the VCH Physician Wellness Steering Committee.

To find out more, I encourage you to read the VPSA Engagement Working Group Terms of Reference as well as the VPSA Roles, Responsibilities and Opportunities document.

Finally, I would like to invite you to our next Engagement Working Group meeting on October 17 from 5:30-6:30 pm in the new Physician Hub for Engagement and Wellness at VGH (next to the Sassafras Café) to find out more about these changes and to bring new ideas for the task groups forward.  We hope that existing members of the Engagement Working Group will reaffirm their interest to continue and that others will express an interest in joining as well.

Sincerely,

Dr. Simon W. Rabkin, President
VPSA/VMDAS
September 2019