A program developed by the Schulich Executive Education Centre (SEEC) is the inspiration behind a project to turn Humber River Hospital into a teaching institution.

Dr. Patrick Safieh, a member of the hospital’s medical staff, is spearheading the project after his own experience in the Healthcare Leadership Development Program (HLDP) developed by SEEC in the Schulich School of Business at York University. HLDP is an example of a SEEC custom program for organizations.

An instructor with SEEC and a lecturer at the University of Toronto, Safieh was inspired to launch a training program for medical students in the hospital’s new Family Medicine Teaching Unit to help them better understand the non-medical aspects of delivering services in a time of budget restraints and disruptive change.

“As part of my own Healthcare Leadership Development Program course work [in 2019], I designed a Family Medicine Teaching Unit at Humber River Hospital, which provides full-time core teaching of University of Toronto medical school students,” said Safieh, a facilitator in SEEC’s new Schulich Mini-MBA: Physician Business Leadership Program. “HLDP helped with areas that I needed to accomplish goals, such as networking, presenting, negotiating and other essential skills.”

Safieh’s success in creating a teaching unit at Humber River Hospital also comes from a partnership he fostered between Humber River Hospital, the University of Toronto and various hospital departments that worked together to achieve a successful result.

“I was privileged to be involved in the genesis of this Humber River project and am proud to say that the HLDP provided the tools to get this project started. The program was instrumental in getting this project off the ground, and will benefit the hospital, physicians, and ultimately patients through improved family and emergency medicine for the community. I was able to immediately apply my HLDP learning in helping to create Humber River Hospital’s Family Medicine Teaching Unit,” said Safieh.

Safieh’s project also aims to position Humber River Hospital as a major health-care centre for the 850,000 people living in a relatively under-serviced section of northwest Toronto.

SEEC has worked successfully for more than 10 years with various health-care organizations across Canada by delivering custom versions of the Healthcare Leadership Development Program. It also offers several open enrolment leadership programs for physicians, dentists and clinicians under the Schulich Mini-MBA brand.

Participants in the HLDP receive a master’s certificate upon completion of 90 hours of study that includes:

• leadership assessment exercises;
• executive one-on-one and group coaching;
• knowledgeable faculty members that teach topics such as design thinking, complexity theory, negotiation, collaboration, and leadership and conflict resolution; and
• independent learning tailored to each participant’s personal leadership development needs.

For more on what SEEC has to offer, visit the website.