Concurrent Sessions

Historically, health care culture has discouraged help-seeking, with staff often feeling pressure to appear infallible. These and other barriers make supporting this high-risk workforce particularly complex. To ensure staff wellness initiatives are meaningful and effective, organizations must foster cultures of health in which staff feel comfortable engaging with available supports.

Following interviews with 17 leaders representing eight hospitals about their experiences supporting worker mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers began a qualitative realist case study within one organization where investment in staff wellness continued to grow beyond the pandemic.

Through ongoing data collection and analysis, a strong sense of community emerged as a key factor influencing staff experience within the hospital environment. This session will explore how
recognizing workers as people and embedding inclusion into organizational priorities has helped foster community-building and support staff well-being across the organization.

In health care, a healthy workforce is essential to delivering safe, effective, and compassionate care. Supporting staff psychological well-being and promoting psychosocial safety requires more than standalone wellness initiatives. It requires intentionally designed systems that reduce preventable psychological harm and promote psychological health through how work is structured, managed, and experienced.

At Holland Bloorview, this work is being advanced through implementation of the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety. A critical first step has been conducting a baseline assessment to understand how organizational policies, practices, leadership behaviours, and culture support employee psychological health. This evidence-informed assessment is guiding the identification of priority improvement areas and the development of a practical action plan to reduce unnecessary psychological strain and strengthen protective psychosocial factors across the organization.

This session will share practical approaches to getting started, including assessment design, meaningful staff engagement, and early lessons learned to support implementation in health care environments.

This session will walk participants through a practical, evidence-informed approach to developing an Organizational Well-Being Strategy grounded in the CSA Standard for Psychological Health and Safety and the Health Canada Nursing Retention Toolkit.

Participants will explore how these frameworks shaped the organization’s methodology, from early concept development to an inventory of existing programs, resources, and organizational strengths. The session will also examine the data collection process, the selection and application of an assessment tool, and how leadership commitment enabled a clear, coordinated path toward a three-year strategy.

Attendees will leave with a stronger understanding of how a structured, standards-based approach can translate into a meaningful and actionable well-being strategy that supports both staff experience and organizational performance.

This session shares how Vision Loss Rehabilitation Canada (VLRC) designed and launched a Joy in Work program grounded in the Institute for Health care Improvement (IHI) framework to address workforce stress, engagement, and sustainability.

Built around the question, “What matters to you?”, the initiative moves beyond one-time wellness events to embed well-being into everyday work. Structured around four pillars — mental, physical, social, and financial well-being — the program translates evidence-informed concepts such as psychological safety, recognition, and belonging into practical, low-lift tools.

Since launch, the program has increased staff participation in well-being initiatives and strengthened shared ownership of culture-of-care practices across teams. Early feedback indicates improved connection, increased conversations about well-being, and greater perceived support.

Participants will learn how staff voice, internal storytelling, and simple engagement strategies can be leveraged to design scalable, adaptable approaches that strengthen retention, reduce burnout risk, and support more sustainable workforce experiences.

Since the launch of CAPSA’s Healthy Workplace Program, interest has grown across the region in addressing a frequently overlooked area of workplace health: substance use and the stigma surrounding it. Stigma, reported by both staff and clients, particularly in health and social service settings, can contribute to increased workplace costs, recruitment and retention challenges, reduced performance and program quality, and declining health outcomes.

One-time training or policy language changes are not enough if organizational practices remain misaligned. Meaningful change requires tailored, comprehensive strategies that foster a proactive and non-judgmental culture that supports both staff well-being and the people they serve.

In this session, CAPSA’s Certified Workplace Health and Performance Practitioner will guide participants through a high-level strategic approach to shifting workplace culture and achieving measurable, lasting change. Drawing on experience across community health, hospital, housing, and related sectors, the session will share practical processes, key outcomes, and lessons learned.

Palliative care staff experience high emotional demands, with burnout reported by up to 66% of workers. This project explored psychological health and safety needs among staff at a large inpatient Palliative Care Unit in Ottawa, Ontario.

A five-item point-of-care survey assessed existing wellness initiatives and opportunities for improvement, mapped to the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace. Findings highlighted strong appreciation for recognition, team cohesion, leadership check-ins, and shared wellness activities, alongside calls for enhanced psychological protection, dedicated support, workload management, and access to mental health services.

In response, a multidisciplinary Palliative Care Unit Wellness Committee was established, on-site counselling was piloted through the Employee and Family Assistance Program, and dedicated wellness spaces were created both on and off the unit. This session shares lessons learned and practical strategies for fostering sustainable cultures of care in emotionally intensive clinical settings.

Mental health challenges impact all workplaces and are particularly prevalent among trauma-exposed professionals, including first responders, health care workers, transit operators, and other frontline professions.

This session highlights the role of community occupational therapy delivered through a psychotherapy lens — “functional psychotherapy” — to bridge psychological insight with real-world function. Drawing on implementation experience across Ontario and British Columbia, presenters will demonstrate how occupational therapists support employees in translating coping strategies into daily routines, restoring identity, and sustaining participation in work.

The session will also explore innovative practices that enhance connection, support early identification, and promote sustainable outcomes. Participants will gain practical strategies to integrate these approaches into workplace mental health pathways to improve outcomes, reduce disability, and strengthen workforce resilience.

This session explores how the Registered Nurses’ Association of Ontario (RNAO) supports organizations in building and sustaining psychologically healthy work environments through its Best Practice Guidelines (BPGs) and Long-Term Care Best Practices Program. These initiatives strengthen person-centred care, improve recruitment and retention, and reduce burnout.

Through facilitated group discussion, participants will review recommendations from the Developing and Sustaining Nursing Leadership BPG and the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety. Attendees will complete a structured gap analysis and identify opportunities to integrate psychological health and safety principles within their local context.

Using the Leading Change Toolkit, an evidence-informed implementation science resource, participants will identify potential barriers and facilitators to change. Participants will leave with concrete next steps to advance psychological health and safety conversations within their organizations and learn how to join the global Best Practice Champions Network®.

Trauma- and violence-informed (TVI) care is an evidence-based approach that supports individuals who have experienced trauma, violence, discrimination, or oppression within society or health care systems. However, this equitable model of care is not yet fully integrated into many health services that remain rooted in oppressive and colonial histories.

Three women with lived experience as trauma survivors and providers of TVI care interviewed 23 interdisciplinary professionals — from peer support workers to medical specialists — about their experiences implementing TVI care in systems not always supportive of this work.

This session will explore how these stories, alongside related literature, can help move organizations toward greater safety for both those seeking and providing care. Discussion will focus on three key themes: healing the healer; sharing power while addressing stigma and shame; and practices of collaboration and resistance that support meaningful culture change.

This session presents the Mental Health and Wellness Champion Program, a peer-led initiative designed to strengthen workplace well-being, resilience, and team culture. Originating within the organization’s Workplace Mental Health and Wellness Strategy and expanded following a successful pilot, the program equips 37 frontline staff and two leaders with evidence-informed activities, resources, and ongoing support to embed wellness into everyday routines.

Champions receive protected time for monthly meetings focused on building knowledge and skills, sharing experiences and challenges, brainstorming solutions, and recognizing contributions — creating a robust support network across the organization.

While Champions do not provide counselling, they encourage participation in wellness initiatives and help colleagues navigate available supports. They foster psychological safety, engagement, and connection by leading evidence-informed wellness initiatives and team-building activities tailored to unit needs.

This session will highlight program design, implementation lessons, and insights into how peer-driven approaches can mitigate psychosocial risks and strengthen sustainable cultures of care.

Increasing societal tension and polarization are spilling into workplaces, leaving employees more vulnerable to psychological harm, harassment, and unsafe environments. For healthcare organizations, where stress and complexity are already high, these risks can be especially acute.

This session provides key guidance on how to combine legal tools, cultural initiatives, and strong leadership to build resilient, psychologically healthy and safe workplaces. Through practical strategies and actionable insights, participants will learn how to foster a culture of respect, inclusion, and accountability.

Learning Objectives

Participants will learn how to:

• Identify key risk factors for workplace harassment and psychological harm
• Leverage civility, respect, and inclusion as protective factors for psychological health and safety
• Implement mitigation strategies to create respectful, inclusive, and psychologically healthy and safe workplaces
• Apply practical leadership techniques and accountability measures to sustain positive culture

Key Takeaway

By the end of this session, participants will be equipped with actionable tools to strengthen psychological health and safety and foster a culture of respect and inclusion in healthcare workplaces.

At Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences one of the pillars in our 2022-2026 Strategic Plan is We Unite. We Unite highlights our focus on creating a diverse and inclusive workplace that empowers and supports our people and teams.

To support this pillar Ontario Shores developed a muti-faceted program that focused on three main undertakings:

1. Engagement and Connection: Focused on reigniting its core value of community through events, appreciation experiences, and the intentional focus of creating a culture of kindness.
2. Belonging: With input from staff, work focused on a diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) strategy to create professional development opportunities.
3. Well-being: With a refresh of its Integrated Wellness Strategy, Ontario Shores implemented numerous activities, resources, and workshops across all domains of wellness.

In high-pressure healthcare environments, finding meaningful ways to support staff mental health is critical. Healthcare workers face increasing levels of stress, burnout, and emotional fatigue. This presentation explores the role of creative workshops as a practical and evidence-informed approach to supporting mental health and wellbeing. Drawing on research and real-world examples, it highlights how creative expression can foster engagement & morale, reduce stress, and build connection among healthcare professionals. Attendees will gain insights into implementation strategies, outcomes, and considerations for integrating creative practices into healthcare settings. Bring a colleague along for this hands-on session!

Across Ontario’s workforce, one in three employees is balancing paid work with unpaid caregiving responsibilities, yet many do not identify as caregivers in the workplace. In health care and community services, this dual role is a significant and often invisible driver of absenteeism, burnout, and turnover.

This session reframes caregiving as a workforce risk factor directly impacting recruitment, retention, and organizational stability. Drawing on data and experience from the Ontario Caregiver Organization, participants will explore how caregiver strain contributes to role conflict, stress-related leave, and workforce exit, and why traditional wellness strategies often fail to address this reality.

Participants will gain practical, low-barrier strategies to better support working caregivers, including building caregiver-inclusive practices, equipping managers to respond effectively, and embedding flexibility into existing policies. Supporting working caregivers is not only a wellness initiative; it is a critical and underutilized strategy for strengthening workforce sustainability.

Health care organizations often struggle to translate EAP utilization data into meaningful strategic insight. This session highlights how SHN Wellness intentionally uses EAP utilization trends and Workplace Outcome Suite (WOS) survey results as core data sources for wellness strategy development and program planning.

Rather than viewing higher utilization as a signal of workforce deterioration, SHN Wellness reframed EAP engagement as a leading indicator of psychological safety, accessibility, and early help-seeking. Using a one-year, SMARTER-aligned health care case example, the session demonstrates how EAP utilization was reviewed alongside changes in productivity, workplace distress, engagement, and life satisfaction to inform priorities, adjust program design, and guide leadership decision-making.

Participants will gain practical insight into integrating EAP and outcome data to support evidence-informed wellness planning while avoiding over-attribution of causality.

Health-care workers experience trauma, moral distress, and emotionally challenging events every day — yet for many years, conversations around mental health in health care remained limited. Since its inception in 2018, the SickKids Peer Support & Trauma Response Program has become a leading model for promoting psychological health and safety in health care. This has included being recognized as a Leading Practice by Accreditation Canada and Health Standards Ontario.

This session will take attendees through the journey of building and scaling an innovative peer support program that provides 24/7 support to staff across one of Canada’s leading pediatric hospitals. Presenters will share the program’s origins, milestones, implementation timeline, and the lessons learned along the way — including challenges, and course corrections that shaped the program into what it is today.

Participants will explore how peer support has helped foster culture change by reducing stigma, increasing psychological safety, and empowering staff to support one another through difficult experiences. Grounded in practical experience and informed by trauma-responsive care, this presentation will provide valuable information and considerations for organizations interested in developing sustainable peer support programming within health care and other high-stress environments.

Health care systems face ongoing recruitment and retention challenges driven by chronic workload pressures, emotional labour, and system complexity. These challenges are heightened in gender-based violence (GBV) service settings, where frontline workers support individuals with complex needs while navigating psychosocial occupational hazards such as vicarious trauma, moral injury, burnout, and limited service capacity — all of which impact workforce sustainability.

In the Canadian context, where approximately one in two people have experienced physical or sexual assault, many health care workers are also personally impacted by trauma, shaping psychological health, safety, and workplace dynamics. Drawing on frontline worker insights and the Life After Impact program — a service supporting individuals with co-occurring GBV and brain injury — this presentation highlights evidence-informed organizational and team-based interventions that strengthen psychological safety foster respectful and inclusive workplace cultures, and support meaningful culture change.

Practical strategies to reduce psychosocial risk, enhance engagement, and promote sustainable workplace environments will be emphasized.

Health care organizations are increasingly expected to advance equity while responding to burnout, retention challenges, and workforce strain. This session explores how equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility, and anti-racism (EDIAA) can be embedded into organizational infrastructure rather than treated as a stand-alone initiative.

Drawing on practical implementation experience in community mental health, this presentation shares a step-by-step EDIAA Starter Kit and Framework Alignment Map designed to help organizations move from commitment to action. Participants will examine how leadership accountability, Employee Resource Groups, policy integration, and measurement strategies can strengthen belonging, workforce sustainability, and organizational readiness.

This session is designed for leaders, managers, and changemakers seeking practical tools to build more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable workplaces in health care.

Change is not only an operational challenge; it is also a neurological and emotional one. In health care, restructuring, policy shifts, funding pressures, and workforce strain can activate threat responses that reduce clarity, trust, adaptability, and engagement.

This session explores the neuroscience of change and demonstrates how leaders can use brain-based, wellness-informed strategies to guide teams through uncertainty more effectively. Participants will learn how perceived loss of control, disrupted identity, and lack of psychological safety contribute to resistance, and how compassionate communication, clear visioning, emotional regulation, and repeated reinforcement can calm the nervous system and support better decision-making.

Drawing on practical change management tools and conscious communication practices, this presentation offers realistic strategies to reduce stress, build buy-in, and sustain momentum across teams. Leaders will leave with actionable approaches to embedding wellness into change initiatives while strengthening accountability, resilience, and culture during times of ongoing transformation.

At Peel Region, more than 60% of employees identify as women, making perimenopause and menopause critical, yet often overlooked, workplace health issues. This session explores Peel Region Health Services and Human Resources’ gender-based health initiative to advance a menopause-inclusive, equity-informed approach to employee well-being. Drawing on an organization-wide event with the Menopause Foundation of Canada attended by more than 500 employees, presenters will share early learnings related to policy gaps, leadership capability, and supportive practices. For example, up to 10% of midlife women leave the workforce due to challenges related to this life stage, while 77% believe there should be more support for menopause at work.

A leader from the Menopause Foundation of Canada will join the session to offer practical guidance on initiating menopause-inclusive workplace change. The session will demonstrate how menopause-informed approaches can strengthen psychological safety, support retention, and create more inclusive workplace practices.

Southlake Health is currently implementing the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in a complex health care environment. The real work has been translating the framework into meaningful, day-to-day action.

This session shares Southlake Health’s practical approach to moving from framework to implementation. Presenters will discuss how psychological health and safety has been embedded into existing structures, including leadership practices, education, psychosocial risk assessments, and integrated staff supports such as peer support and crisis response programs.

The session will also explore challenges encountered along the way, including competing priorities, varying levels of leadership readiness, and the realities of health care delivery. Participants will leave with practical ideas, tools, and lessons learned that they can apply in their own organizations, regardless of where they are in their implementation journey.

Health care workers in high-acuity pediatric settings face ongoing exposure to trauma, moral distress, and chronic workplace stress. The Peer Emotional Empowerment Program of Support (PEEPS) at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) was developed as a peer-led response to provide timely, psychologically safe support to staff when they need it most.

This session shares the development, implementation, and evolution of PEEPS, a program grounded in Critical Incident Stress Management principles and delivered by trained peer facilitators embedded within clinical teams. Participants will learn how peer-to-peer support can reduce barriers associated with traditional mental health services, normalize conversations about workplace mental health, and strengthen individual and team resilience.

Through real-world examples and lessons learned, this presentation offers practical insights that can be adapted across diverse health care settings to support staff well-being, retention, and psychologically healthy workplaces.

Health care organizations are navigating constant change — restructuring, system transformation, evolving workforce realities, and increasing pressures on teams. At Cambridge Memorial Hospital, the Change x Wellness Champions initiative was designed to embed psychological health and safety principles into the HIS transformation project while recognizing the emotional journey staff experience during transition.

This peer-based network equips champions with tools grounded in change management and the neuroscience of change, enabling them to support peers through uncertainty while fostering a culture of well-being.

This session explores how integrating wellness into change management can reduce resistance, leverage early adopters, strengthen readiness, and support teams through complex shifts. Participants will gain practical insights into how the Champion model enhances communication, peer support, and psychologically safe conversations, helping organizations build engagement, resilience, and capacity for change.

This session introduces a practical Physician Mental Health Needs Assessment designed to better understand physician well-being across hospital, community, and private practice settings.

While burnout is widely recognized, less attention has been given to how workplace culture, system pressures, and business responsibilities impact physicians differently depending on where they practice.

Participants will explore key survey areas, including workload, moral distress, administrative burden, psychological safety, leadership support, and professional isolation. The session will also demonstrate how this data can be used to identify priorities and guide meaningful, system-level change.

This session highlights a series of accessible, staff-centred wellness initiatives implemented at Meighen Health Centre to strengthen workplace culture and support retention across clinical and non-clinical roles.

The program focuses on practical strategies that can be integrated into daily workplace life, including Wellness Rooms for rest and reflection, Safe Space Socials to foster peer support and psychological safety, and wellness programming such as massage opportunities, ergonomic postural checks, and team-based activities. Staff-led cultural events promote inclusion and celebrate workforce diversity, while educational initiatives raise awareness of stress management and psychosocial risk factors.

Participants will gain practical examples and lessons learned demonstrating how small, intentional interventions can enhance staff experience, strengthen morale, and support workforce sustainability in long-term care settings.

This session examines how intentional psychosocial risk management can support recruitment, retention, and risk reduction in health care environments. Participants will explore how job-level psychosocial factors — including workload, work organization, role clarity, and support — interact with physical hazards such as musculoskeletal injury risks to influence worker physical and mental health, engagement, and workforce sustainability.

The session will outline practical approaches for assessing psychosocial risks in busy clinical and support-service roles, with attention to feasibility, participation, and integration with existing occupational health, safety, and psychological health processes.

A long-term care case example will demonstrate how participatory, job-focused discussions of psychosocial risk can translate into prevention-oriented actions that strengthen job design, reduce harm, and support workforce stability across diverse health care settings.