Leadership for Aboriginal Health Services
Accreditation Canada's Leadership standards help Canadian health care organizations achieve excellence in leadership. The approach taken to meet these responsibilities will vary according to the organization's size, structure, and mandate. Hence, these standards for Aboriginal Health Services organizations include the applicable requirements for non-hospital organizations.
Accreditation Canada has adopted the four values that are fundamental to this approach, as outlined by the IPFCC, and integrated into the standards. The values are:
- Dignity and respect: Listening to and honouring client and family perspectives and choices. Client and family knowledge, values, beliefs, and cultural backgrounds are incorporated into the planning and delivery of care.
- Information sharing: Communicating and sharing complete and unbiased information with clients and families in ways that are affirming and useful. Clients and families receive timely, complete, and accurate information in order to effectively participate in care and decision-making.
- Partnership and participation: Encouraging and supporting clients and families to participate in care and decision making to the extent that they wish.
- Collaboration: Collaborating with clients and families in policy and program development, implementation and evaluation, facility design, professional education, and delivery of care.
The four sections are:
Creating and sustaining a caring culture: Addresses identifying, strengthening, and disseminating the culture and values throughout the organization. In particular, it addresses the need for health care organizations to create a culture that supports a safe and healthy work environment and ongoing quality improvement.
Planning and designing services: Addresses the organization's ability to assess trends in the environment, including the service needs of the populations it serves, and use that information to plan its structures, management systems, and services. It also deals with the organization's relationships with stakeholders and its processes to manage change.
Allocating resources and building infrastructure: Addresses managing resources, working with partners to share and optimize resources, allocating resources fairly and in accordance with organizational priorities, human resources and performance management systems, the physical environment, and information systems infrastructure.
Monitoring and improving quality and safety: Addresses the organizational systems and processes needed to deliver safe, high quality services and achieve the organization's goals and objectives, including assessing and improving work flow, preparing for disasters and emergencies, and improving client safety on an ongoing basis.
All Accreditation Canada standards are developed through a rigorous process that includes a comprehensive literature review, consultation with a standards working group or advisory committee comprised of experts in the field, and evaluation by client organizations and other stakeholders.