Vital Signs: We Need Equity Literate Healthcare Leaders

Healthcare is our most vital public service, yet these days it is under incredible pressure recovering from COVID, cutbacks and an aging population.  Alongside a more diverse staff bringing differences in attitude, communication styles and identities, it is a challenging time to be a leader in a healthcare environment. 

Persistent Gaps in Care and Workforce Inequities

Gaps in care still exist for many populations within the healthcare system.  One of the key challenges facing today’s healthcare leaders is developing strategies to address these gaps by supporting staff with the knowledge and skills needed to approach differences with both expertise and empathy.

For example:

• Roughly one in five Indigenous people living off-reserve report experiencing unfair treatment, racism or discrimination from a health care professional (Statistics Canada 2024)
• Research indicates striking inaccuracies in pulse oximeter readings among Black patients, which have resulted in racial differences in delivery of care through the COVID pandemic, and this is not a new phenomenon, dating all the way back to 1987. (Plaisime 2023)
• Doctors are far less likely to recommend timely treatment for heart disease and heart attacks in women (Lee, Ferry, Anand, et al 2019) Medical practitioners frequently underestimate the pain of female patients compared to male patients (Zhang et al. 2021)

At the same time these gaps exist in healthcare services, studies show that the healthcare sector is one predominantly staffed by racialized women, many of whom are new immigrants:

• Even though women make up 75% of the Care workforce, they get paid less on average than men in the sector;
• Many care workers take on a second job to make ends meet,
• Perception of racialized women being “well-suited” for jobs in the care sector because the work is “culturally appropriate” (Braedley et al.  2018 & Statistics Canada 2022).

These predominantly female and BIPOC healthcare workers also experience a significant emotional and physical toll that is often unidentified and unaddressed by employers.  There is a lack of support for job related injuries, and a lack of institutional policies and support around racism and sexism so the burden of navigating these systemic pressures falls to workers.  The result is that 25% of Care Workers leave the sector after just two years of work experience and 40% leave within the first year of graduation (Statistics Canada 2022 & CCPA Ontario 2020).

Healthcare managers in this environment need to be literate about equity issues in the broader population as well as within their own teams.  Skills such as timely and transparent feedback, mediating differences among diverse staff, and building psychological safety among team members, become even more important, because with less resources, teams need to pull together to meet the standard of care for all patients.

A Program for Healthcare Leaders

Given our work over the last number of years in the healthcare industry with doctors, nurses and community healthcare staff, we are offering a unique new program: called Vital Signs: Treating Polarization and Creating Psychological Safety in Healthcare Environments.  If you are a healthcare professional or administrator, a middle or senior level manager, a team lead or in another form of leadership role, we invite you to join us for  this three session series exploring how to lead through this time of polarization and pressure in healthcare environments.

To learn more: Vital Signs: Treating Polarization and Creating Psychological Safety in Healthcare Environments.

Annahid Dashtgard

CEO and Co-Founder, Anima Leadership

As a seasoned change-maker and non-fiction author, Annahid gets juiced by figuring out what makes people and systems tick, and how to move them from survive to thrive. Over the last two decades she has worked with hundreds of organizations and leaders to create more just and equitable futures. She’s a first generation immigrant woman of colour who uses her voice to illuminate our common journey to belonging. Her new book Fire and Silence: A Roadmap for BIPOC Leaders is available for order now. Alongside her bestselling books —Bones of Belonging: Finding Wholeness in a White World (2023) and Breaking the Ocean: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion and Reconciliation (2019)— she has written for numerous other publications and sits on the boards of both the Writer’s Trust and the Writer’s Union of Canada. 

Annahid has a Masters in Adult Education and has trained in various psychological modalities (Process work, Somatic Experiencing trauma training, mindfulness and Chinese medicine) to understand the root of systems change in human consciousness. Besides consulting, educating, coaching and writing on JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) issues for over two decades across both public and private sectors, she has carefully cultivated her love of reading, usually on the couch with a glass of wine in hand trying to tune out the voices of her little ones. Check out her wiki page or website for more.