Learning in Action: Transforming National Guidance in Pediatric Pain into Local Impact
September 2025
This session examines why the standard was developed, how Solutions for Kids in Pain (SKIP) and the Health Standards Organization partnered to create it, and its potential to improve care for children across Canada. It also shares how the standard is being implemented in Nova Scotia through collaboration between IWK Health and rural hospitals, with a focus on practical steps, local context, and available tools and resources.
Learning Loops: Policy-driven evidence and evidence-driven policy
May 2025
In this session, Dr. Andrea Bishop and Eric Coates present the Nova Scotia College of Pharmacists’ Staffing and Workload Initiative for Safety and Effectiveness (StaffWISE) initiative, which has collected more than one million data points to better understand the relationships between pharmacy staffing, practitioner wellbeing, and quality of care. They explain how these efforts are informing a new Pharmacy Staffing Level Policy—and supporting a broader culture of learning within the organization.
The Evolution of the Mobile Public Health Unit in Nova Scotia
March 2025
Launched during the pandemic, Nova Scotia’s Public Health Mobile Unit (PHMU) is an agile, community-focused team that is evolving through real-time feedback, evaluation and engagement. In this session, Holly Gillis and Louise Hanavan share how engagement is shaping the PHMU’s role after the pandemic—and some tips for engaging interested parties in health service improvement.
Using data to inform real-time decision making and health system improvement
January 2025
Organizing and delivering health care services generates large amounts of data that can be harnessed to drive continuous improvement. In this session, Andrea Muenster, Steven Carrigan and Dr. Logan Lawrence introduced the Care Coordination Centre (C3), an innovative program using real-time data to improve patient access and flow at more than 40 sites across Nova Scotia. Dr. Ted McDonald then used a number of health-related examples to illustrate how administrative data is helping to inform policy and practice in New Brunswick.
Collaborative Systematic Reviews: Digital Education for Cardiac Surgery Patients
November 2024
Evidence synthesis is a valuable tool that helps learning health systems to leverage external research by gathering and synthesizing information—generating a big picture on a topic and identifying any gaps in understanding. In this session, Leah Boulos and Rob Wells shared their experience working on a systematic review of digital education for cardiac surgery patients—and tips for how to successfully do a systematic review in collaboration with patient/public partners and knowledge users.