Having an adequate supply of skilled perioperative nurses and other care providers is vital to our province’s strategy to improve access and support more timely surgical care.

The Nova Scotia Health Learning Institute for Health Care Providers offers the Perioperative Nursing Program (PONP) that provides registered nurses (RNs) with the advanced education and training needed to work in operating rooms (ORs).

In May 2022, Nova Scotia Health’s Innovation Hub launched a six-month commercialization project, funded by the Coordinated Accessible National (CAN) Health Network, with Virtual Hallway, a Nova Scotian company that enables collaboration of primary care providers directly with specialists to seek advice on patient care.

Since the project launched, over 2,500 consultations have taken place, with primary care providers rating the service a 4.9 out of 5. Over 84 per cent of the referrals facilitated by the Virtual Hallway platform have allowed patients to avoid a wait list entirely.

Nova Scotia Health’s QEII Health Sciences Centre is now home to the Mako SmartRobotics system – the second surgical robot of its kind in Canada.

The innovative robotic arm is controlled by a surgeon during hip and knee surgeries and offers unprecedented precision for the placement of a joint implant (arthroplasty surgeries).

As a medical laboratory technologist (MLT) with the QEII Health Sciences Centre’s anatomical pathology lab for 15 years, Alison Jones is used to helping diagnose cancers. Her latest role with Nova Scotia Health’s new micrographic surgery program has her excited to be playing a direct role in the cure.

Jones and her colleagues, Robin Paris-Adams and Robert Smith, provide on-site laboratory services for the new skin cancer treatment program, which is also known as Mohs, for Dr. Frederick Mohs who developed the treatment. 

A new clinic is treating adults living with obesity in Nova Scotia Health’s Eastern Zone (Cape Breton Island, Antigonish and Guysborough counties).

The Obesity Care Clinic, located in Glace Bay’s Sterling Mall, focuses on obesity as a chronic disease. It works with patients to find and treat the root cause of their obesity. It also provides some orthopedic surgical patients with weight-loss treatment prior to their surgery.

Today I woke up at 5:50 a.m. 

This morning was busier than most as I needed to see our admitted patients in Halifax, before heading over the bridge to Dartmouth. I debated getting another ten minutes of sleep, but thought it was best get up right away.

When I arrived at 6:20 a.m. I printed my list of admitted patients for my three supervising physicians - thankfully everything went as planned. Everyone was discharged as scheduled from the day before. 

Tammy Ripley spent 90 days on the transplant wait list. She remembers every detail from the day she found out she would be receiving a heart transplant, right up until the moment she came out of surgery.

“It was a nice day in April a few years ago, around 2 p.m. I was feeling very sick that day and down,” she recalled.

“My friend had taken me for a walk in hopes of cheering me up. My cell phone rang on our way home and just like that - I got the news that I was going to get a second chance at life.”

Nova Scotia Health will mark another major milestone in its plan to improve access and care for joint replacement patients, with the opening of a new Orthopedic Assessment Clinic in New Glasgow this fall.
 
Enhancing and expanding Orthopedic Assessment Clinics was a key strategy within the multi-year Hip and Knee Action Plan announced in the fall of 2017 with support from the Department of Health and Wellness.
 

A great deal of preparation has gone into the planning and designing of Atlantic Canada's first hybrid operating room (OR). 

The hybrid OR will be located on the fifth floor of the Halifax Infirmary (HI) site of the QEII Health Sciences Centre and will feature state of the art medical imaging equipment that will allow for highly complex advanced surgical procedures. 

It will offer the capability to perform image-guided procedures through small incisions, minimizing pain and speeding up recovery.