Database of Health Workforce Innovations

644

Title

Redeployment and Expanded Roles at McGill University Health Centre

Brief Description of Challenge

Brief Description of Innovation

Cordelia McNeal is a nurse clinician at the Montreal Chest Institute Day Hospital who took on the challenge of setting up C4 – the first COVID Unit as its nurse manager. She and her team had one week to prepare the area to receive patients, and along with the tight timeline, came difficult emotions linked to the uncertainty of the pandemic. Physicians have also been reassigned outside their specialties to provide bedside care to patients infected with COVID-19. Dr. Beatrice Wang, director of the MUHC Melanoma Clinic, is one of six dermatologists to step out of her specialty to work on the COVID unit.

Innovation – Increase Numbers

Licensure flexibility
Cross-sector staff deployments

Innovation – Increase Flexibility

Rapid upskilling/reskilling existing and available workers (eg. laid off)
Alternative deployments for health workers whose normal duties are temporarily suspended
Task shifting/delegation

Innovation – Increase Availability

Worker

Nurse Practitioners*
Nurse Specialists*
Nurses - Licensed Practical
Nurses - Registered
Physicians - Emergency
Physicians - Intensive Care
Physicians - Primary/Family
Physicians - Specialists
Respiratory Therapists

Task/Skill

Training / Retraining

Brief Description of Setting

Within the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), staff have been redeployed to meet the demands of COVID-19. Over the last few weeks, Dr. Kevin Schwartzman, director of the Division of Respiratory Medicine at the MUHC, and his colleagues have been devoted to ramping up capacity--in part by converting part of the Centre for Innovative Medicine at the Glen, a space usually reserved for research, into C4, a unit dedicated entirely to caring for patients with COVID-19. In a matter of weeks, COVID ward capacity grew to over 100 beds across the MUHC, while COVID ICU capacity grew to 50 beds

Setting - Organization

Critical Care
Diagnostic Services
Emergency Medical Services
Hospitals

Setting - Geography

Urban/Suburban

Facilitators

Barriers

Impact / Evaluation

Link

https://muhc.ca/news-and-patient-stories/articles/stepping-out-their-comfort-zone-and-entirely-new-covid-unit

Contact

Organization

McGill University Health Centre

Phone Number

Country

Expert Assessment – Impact

Assessed Risk - Workers

Assessed Risk - System

Assessed Risk – Patients

Expert Assessment – Confidence

Language

French

Type

Grey Literature

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