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When Susie Hardy began her career in healthcare, she didn’t realize how quality and patient safety would set the trajectory for her current role as Perioperative (Surgical) Services Quality Improvement Leader for the Eastern Zone (Antigonish, Cape Breton and Guysborough areas).
“I started my career in medical device reprocessing (MDR) expecting it to be a manual labour job but quickly realized that it was very much about patient safety and required complex knowledge about microbiology and infection control.”
After nearly a decade in MDR, ensuring surgical teams and others had the reprocessed devices they needed to safely deliver care, Hardy made a career leap. She completed her Bachelor of Science in Nursing at Cape Breton University and began working as a registered nurse with the Perioperative (Surgical) Services team. Six years later she is leading and supporting change and quality improvement initiatives in new ways with her latest role.
“We prioritize quality improvement initiatives that are evidenced-based as seen in data trends and through patient feedback,” says Hardy. “Some of the improvement strategies such as reducing surgical site infection rates, reducing catheter acquired infections in post-surgical patients, and strengthening our MDR departments, ensures more positive experiences and better health outcomes for our patients.”
It is often a challenge to initiate change and implement new processes across different groups of healthcare providers. Hardy is motivated to facilitate teamwork and aims to ensure that key players are empowered to get involved and ask questions along the way.
“Scrutiny is important, and I value it so much. It leads us to go further and prompts surgeons, anesthesiologists, nurses, and others to express their ideas, concerns and to expand on research to advance initiatives that improve how we deliver care to patients.”
Hardy notes that each quality improvement initiative and continued research helps to address and reduce surgical wait times in some way or another.
“What we learn contributes to a decrease in delayed and cancelled surgeries and lessens the need for patients to return for additional procedures. This results in reduced wait lists, helps free up hospital beds, and has a positive impact on surgical access for our patients.”
Nova Scotia Health has four perioperative Quality Improvement Leaders, one for each zone, collaborating with teams across the province to increase surgical access and improve quality and patient safety.
“There are so many tangible and important ways to create impact in healthcare and improve surgical outcomes for our patients. My job is to identify areas where we can improve and then lead our teams to implement changes that will benefit all Nova Scotians.”
Hardy was instrumental in bringing the Theatre Arts Program offered by the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA) to Sydney. In this program, Perioperative team members from Cape Breton Regional, Glace Bay Hospital, Northside General and St. Martha’s Regional Hospital, along with labour and delivery staff worked through learning activities and brainstorming sessions to address specific problems and share solutions for quality care. Click here to read about the CMPA session.