Best Practices, Innovation and Research

The Long Term Care, Rural Health, and Quality branch of Western Health provides direction and support to the organization in strategic planning, research, evaluation, ethical decision-making, quality improvement, risk management, clinical effectiveness, and operational efficiencies.

Quality and Risk Management

Working with the Department of Health & Community Services, the Quality staff has developed a planning framework to ensure that all staff work toward the achievement of the strategic directions of the Department of Health and Community Services and Western Health’s strategic and operational priorities. Western Health shares its achievements and progress on the strategic directions through the Annual Report at the Board of Trustee's Annual General Meeting and on our website under Publications. 

Western Health supports research and evaluation as an integral component of everyday decision making. Building evaluation capacity is a priority for Quality staff. Quality staff has prepared a framework to support the evaluation of Western Health programs.

As described by the Ethics Framework, The Western Health Ethics Committee is responsible for ethics education, policy development and review, case facilitation, consultation and review, and research. The Research Review Committee, responsible for reviewing research studies involving Western Health clients, staff, resources or data, reports to the Western Health Ethics Committee.

Western Health recognizes the contribution of policies and procedures in defining the responsibilities of staff and ensuring consistency in best practices. 

Research

All research conducted within Western Health requires review and approval by the provincial Health Research Ethics Authority (HREA). Applications for research review by the HREA are available here.

Once research is approved by the HREA, principal investigators will then have to submit their research to the Western Health Research Review Committee. The application for research review can be downloaded here. Through this research process, Western Health will decide if a proposed study can be accommodated and/or of benefit to Western Health.

Anyone requiring assistance with the research ethics review process can contact Tracey Wells-Stratton, Regional Manager - Research and Evaluation, at (709)784-6801 or traceywells@westernhealth.nl.ca

Thank you for your ongoing support of research within Western Health.