We are AHS. Our people make safe, quality patient care possible.
To achieve this goal, we held a vote to choose a new vision statement for AHS. More than 12,000 comments were shared.
Our people participated in a 24-hour online forum to share their views on what we value here at AHS. Our five core values spell out AHS Cares — Compassion, Accountability, Respect, Excellence and Safety — they express what’s important to us, how we make decisions, and the behaviours we strive to model.
The AHS 2016 - 17 Health Plan and Business Plan drew upon our vision and refreshed values to focus on four priorities:
We worked with our people to develop four foundational strategies:
We’ve also developed a common standard — our Professional Practice in Action Guide — to outline how we’re expected to work individually and collectively as we provide quality, patient-focused care and positive patient/family experiences. Creating, Caring, Competence, Commitment and Collaboration … plus Enabling, Environment, Evidence, Encouragement, Engagement and Evaluation — are the pillars of our practice reflected by our Cs and Es.
With a passion for healthcare, in 2016 the AHS Board of Directors announced Dr. Verna Yiu as the new President & CEO.
Dr. Yiu has earned the respect and trust of the Board, and is an outstanding leader and ambassador for the organization. She cares about quality and safety and, most of all, she cares about people. She embodies the qualities Albertans want in their health system.
Linda Hughes, Board Chair Alberta Health Services
As a pediatrician, one would think that when I had my own child, I would know everything medical-related to raising a baby. So case in point: daughter, six weeks old, crying at night and not settling. After about two nights, I was worried, called my mom and told her about the problem. By the way, my mom has no medical background and worked at the University of Alberta in the physics department as support staff. So my mom calmly said, ‘Maybe it’s gas.’ I hit my forehead with my hand and thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding. Eleven years of post-secondary education, including medical school and residency, and now I’m a certified pediatrician and I couldn’t even diagnose colic in my own baby.’ Which only goes to prove that being in the medical field does not mean that you are objective and can think like a clinician when it comes to your own family. So I thanked my mom for her diagnosis, rocked my daughter some more, and the colic eventually went away. And I never again made the assumption that being in healthcare provides you with any advantages to knowing what to do when it comes to illness in your own family.
Dr. Verna Yiu, President & CEO Alberta Health Services
In May 2016, our courage was tested. A wildfire raged in and around Fort McMurray and the Wood Buffalo region. Here is one story of our courage under fire.
As I left the hospital the sky overhead was a mix of black smoke and orange flames with burnt spruce needles falling down around me. Abasand Hill, across the highway from the hospital, was on fire and there was a house and structures across the street also on fire.
Colin Jardine, a Fort McMurray resident and AHS Director of Technology Architecture and Solutions in the Information Technology (IT) department
Working around the clock, our IT teams swiftly provided reception centres in several cities — and the temporary Fort McMurray Urgent Care Centre — with the technology AHS staff needed to function and care for thousands of residents and evacuees. Nine IT members were displaced by the fires, including one who spent the night in his car at the side of the road with his wife and baby after running out of gas during the evacuation.
Our people demonstrated courage and hope. They successfully evacuated 73 acute care patients and 32 continuing care clients from the Northern Lights Regional Health Centre.
Many of our staff were personally impacted by the wildfire; some lost their homes. Our people wanted to help our colleagues, so we set up a payroll deduction so they could give to the Canadian Red Cross Wildfire Relief.
Slave Lake is a great place to work. Out of all the areas I’ve worked in, this is the best station I’ve ever worked for. We’re a tight-knit group. We’ve really become a family, but it’s the management that makes our station shine. They’re really close to us and hold daily meetings to check in and see what’s going on, so they really understand what we go through on a day-to-day basis. You always know you can fall back on them.
Ryan, Emergency Medical Technician Slave Lake
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