Keynotes

Keynote Speakers

Dr. Brian Goldman

Tuesday, October 27
9:30 a.m.-10:30 a.m.

Shame and its impact on healthcare and healthcare providers

Healthcare providers are highly educated and bring dedication to their work. But an unknown number of providers are burdened by an exaggerated sense of shame about their work and about themselves.

In his keynote address, ER physician, medical broadcaster and bestselling author Dr. Brian Goldman talks about the insidious yet pervasive influence of shame on healthcare and healthcare providers.

He defines shame in the context of medical errors and distinguishes shame from guilt. Sharing examples from his own clinical experience, Goldman illustrates the adverse emotional impact of shame on healthcare providers, in particular how and why shame diminishes empathy for patients and co-workers. He also shows how shame adversely affects teamwork as well as the development of a culture of safety in healthcare.

Finally, he provides suggestions on how to deal with feelings of shame so as to facilitate learning from errors.

BRIAN GOLDMAN is an ER doctor and a bestselling author. His CBC Radio show and podcast, White Coat, Black Art, has been on the air for over a decade. A sought-after speaker, he is also the host of The Dose, a CBC podcast about personal health. Brian Goldman lives in Toronto with his family.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER For fans of The Pitt, a look at life on the front line in one of Canada’s busiest ERs

The Casino Shift is an hour-by-hour account of what a Canadian emergency room is like in these turbulent times when ER staff must be prepared to see, diagnose, and treat any condition, often under unrelenting pressure. In addition to the introduction of the “casino shift” (a shorter night shift), there have been incredible leaps in technology and the know-how of ER physicians since Dr. Brian Goldman wrote the bestselling The Night Shift fifteen years ago. But patients’ problems can be exponentially more complex too.

But The Casino Shift is about much more than one shift at one hospital, though. It’s also about what goes on in ERs big and small across Canada. From the incredible challenges of practising “waiting room medicine,” to discovering untreated cancer in a twenty-something patient, to diagnosing an extremely rare case of auto-brewery syndrome, Dr. Goldman shares the stories of frustrated and burned-out colleagues as well as the passion they have for being there in your hour of greatest need. With inspiring stories about diagnoses made, puzzles solved, and lives saved, The Casino Shift is a raw, revealing, and compelling look at life on the front line.

Dr. Ellen Choi

Wednesday, October 28
8:45 a.m.-9:45 a.m.

The Three Layers of Employee Well-Being: Self, Climate, and Culture

Healthcare employees remain one of the most depleted and overworked employee populations to date. Solutions tend to target the individual level with wellness programs, resilience training and mindfulness apps, yet burnout rates keep climbing. The missing piece isn’t the intervention, it’s also the climate the training is offered within.

Organizational climate, the felt sense of what’s normal, rewarded, and expected on a unit, quietly decides two things: whether well-being is sustained or eroded over time, and whether any wellness training actually survives contact with a twelve-hour shift. Workplace mental health training is most effective when it’s supported by a culture where people feel safe setting healthy boundaries. High-pressure performance work climates may also activate identity patterns drawn to overwork, driving even well-supported clinicians into unsustainable overwork.

This talk makes the case that employee well-being requires a multi-level strategy. Importantly, culture isn’t just something that happens to us, it is also something that each person influences and perpetuates. Attendees will leave with:

  • An understanding of how climate impacts employee well-being
  • Insight into the three false-self patterns driving overwork in high-performing clinicians
  • Practical ways individual behaviour reshapes team-level culture over time
  • A reframe: even without authority to change the system, what you do within yourself matters

Dr. Ellen Choi is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University, where she researches how mindfulness, self-compassion, authenticity support employee well-being. She holds a PhD from the Ivey Business School and an MSc from the London School of Economics. Dr. Choi teaches in the area of organizational behaviour on topics such as leadership, training and development, motivation and decision-making. Prior to graduate school, Ellen traded in commercial real estate with CBRE. She is also a yoga instructor, executive meditation coach, and delivers keynote speaker.