This half-day symposium brings together physician leaders, health system innovators, and frontline practitioners to explore what it means to lead—and thrive—with compassion, clarity, and courage in today’s complex healthcare environment.
Each of the three panels will engage in advance scholarly work — such as surveys, scoping reviews, applied research, or case analyses — to anchor discussions in evidence. During the symposium, participants will engage in interactive formats that build on this scholarship. The collective work will culminate in peer-reviewed, publishable outputs that move beyond identifying challenges to offering hopeful, pragmatic, and evidence-informed tools. These outputs will equip leaders to help their teams, departments, and hospitals thrive in complexity and deliver exceptional, patient-centred emergency care.
Panel 1: Building Sustainable Leadership and Teams: The Healthy Leader, the Healthy Team
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Focus: Creating joyful, resilient leaders and teams where people thrive.
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Led by: Katrina Hurley
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Key Themes:
· Building high-functioning, positive-energy teams
· Cultivating psychological safety and inclusivity
· Practical tools for sustaining connection, energy, and balance in leadership
Output: Scholarly paper offering pragmatic, evidence-informed tools and frameworks to help leaders and teams thrive at individual, departmental, and system levels.
Panel 2: Managing the Outside World Inside the ED: Leading Through Political, Religious, and Global Conflict
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Focus: Equipping leaders to bravely and compassionately address how global, local, social, religious, and values-based conflicts surface in healthcare teams and patient care.
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Led by: TBC
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Key Themes:
· Recognizing the impact of global and local conflicts on staff, patients, and communities
· Leading conversations when team members are deeply affected, divided, or hold differing principles
· Building cultures of respect, psychological safety, and compassion amid disagreement and value-based tension
· Strategies for inclusive leadership: balancing free expression, professional responsibility, and patient-centred care
Output: Scholarly paper developing ethical and leadership frameworks that offer actionable strategies for leaders to foster respectful, cohesive, and compassionate teams in times of social, political, religious, or values-based division.
Panel 3: Thriving in Our Complex System: Practical Leadership Tools for the Care Our Patients Deserve
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Focus: Empowering department chiefs and hospital leaders with practical, evidence-based tools to strengthen accountability, improve patient flow, and ensure every patient receives the timely, high-quality emergency care that Canadians deserve.
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Led by: Carolyn Snider + Theme content leads
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Key Themes:
· Creating Shared Accountability for Flow: Translating CAEP’s Access Block and Accountability Failure report into practical frameworks that help leaders clarify responsibility across departments, align with hospital executives, and turn shared challenges into shared solutions. *i.e. build upon the accountability toolbox work
· Operational and Data-Driven Leadership: Equipping leaders with concrete tools to optimize staffing, bed utilization, and emergency department flow—while using data and dashboards to track outcomes, tell compelling stories, and advocate effectively for system-wide improvement. (Theme lead: Sophie Gosselin)
· Collaborative Leadership Across Silos: Strategies for building cross-departmental partnerships (ED–inpatient–administration) that turn shared challenges into shared responsibility and foster a culture of continuous improvement. (Theme lead: Carolyn Snider)
Output: Scholarly paper producing a concise Leadership Toolkit—a practical guide that equips ED chiefs and hospital administrators with evidence-informed strategies to enhance accountability, flow, collaboration, and patient-centred performance across their systems.
If you would like to join the symposium team, please contact Judy Morris or Carolyn Snider.