Messages from our leadership - Bruyère

This year, we reflect on the incredible efforts and perseverance of our teams at Bruyère, who continued to overcome challenges throughout the second year of the pandemic with compassion and commitment to those we serve.

From the advent of Omicron, to staffing shortages, and the several week downtown occupation, our teams worked tirelessly to prioritize the care of our patients and residents. As we actively work to build and strengthen our workforce to support our staff and attract new talent, we thank our teams for their continued resilience and dedication to our community.

In addition, we opened a new low-intensity rehabilitation unit at our Bruyère Health Saint-Vincent Hospital site and continue to work on our hospital redevelopment project to modernize our hospital sites over the next ten years. 

As a partner in the regional system, we are collaborating to better integrate care and develop novel approaches that improve patient outcomes. For example, a new stroke pilot, led by Bruyère and part of the new regional integrated rehabilitation hub. This important initiative is helping patients get the care they need in the right place at the right time by increasing cooperation between referral organizations and health care providers in the community.

Furthermore, we are better integrating care within our own walls by working to transition our palliative care program to our Bruyère Health Saint-Vincent Hospital site. We are moving towards a new model of care that leverages the strengths of our palliative and complex care programs and will enhance the patient and loved one experience. This will help make a palliative approach to care accessible to more people recognizing that this care improves quality of life at all stages of the care journey – not just at end-of-life.

Looking ahead, we are planning for the future and helping to build more capacity in the region. This year, we received funding for 192 new and repurposed long-term care beds, which will help us increase the number of people we can get off waitlists and welcome into our homes in the coming years.

As an academic health care organization, Bruyère is committed to training the next generation of researchers and health care professionals, and many of them helped us expand our partnership with local settlement agencies and Ottawa Public Health this year. By bringing together a group of multilingual experts and offering vaccination information sessions at the height of Omicron, we helped community members get answers to their questions and overcome language and location barriers.

None of this, of course, is possible without our teams in care, teaching and research, our health care and community partners, and our donors who have all stepped up in the past years to help us navigate one of the most challenging times in our history and are helping us look to the future.

Thank you for your unwavering commitment and support.