Mark your calendars! The International Center for Clinical Excellence is pleased to announce the “Achieving Clinical Excellence” (ACE) conference to be held at the Westin Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri on October 20-22nd, 2010.
K. Anders Erickson, Ph.D., the editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance and recognized “expert on experts,” will keynote the event. Through a combination of plenary presentations and intensive workshops, an internationally renowned faculty of researchers and educators, including Scott D. Miller, Ph.D. and John Norcross, Ph.D., will help participants discover the means to achieve excellence in clinical practice, leadership, ethics, and personal care.
Attendees will also meet and learn directly from internationally ranked performers from a variety of professions, including medicine, science, music, entertainment, and sports. As just one example, the Head Coach of the Olympic, Gold-Medal-winning Women’s volleyball team, Hugh McCutcheon, will present at the conference. In addition to a pre-conference day on ethics and law, internationally renowned concert pianist David Helfgott, whose heart-warming story was featured in the award winning film Shine, will perform on Thursday evening, October 21st. Join us in Kansas City for three days of science, skill building, and inspiration.
I am please to announce that a non-profit organization in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto will begin consulting with me this week. The organization, Youth Link ( http://www.youthlink.ca ), is a team of counsellors dedicated to working with youth and their families, struggling with a variety of concerns. The team lead by Manager Paul Bessin has been using CDOI for over one year, and hopes to gain the practical knowledge necessary to balance the multiple demands put onto counsellors, typical of non-profits who have government funding. Specifically, as many of you know, funders can have ideas about what type of information they need, and perhaps what kind of assessment tools they approve of. This is all well and good unless it takes the clinician and the client down a path that is time consuming, with little benefit to outcomes.
Although this is a real problem, facing many clinicians, I believe that working from the bottom-up can have positive effects on the the system – as one colleague said to me, ‘changing one relationship at a time.’ Ever the optimist, I know that the apparent growing demand for ‘outcomes’ and ‘accountability’ by governments and other types of funding bodies will lead to a convergence between CDOI practitioners and the top-level policy makers. After all, we want the same thing, clients to get better by getting the best service, in a timely manner, with positive results.
The support and knowledge gained by many other groups using CDOI throughout the world can, in my experience, help provide some more productive roads to take. This is an exciting time for me, as I have done training and consultation on Vancouver Island, BC, but have not had the opportunity to provide support for a team in Ontario, some 4300 km or 2700 miles away. This is also the first time I have acted as a Certified Trainer with the International Center for Clinical Excellence (ICCE).
Stay tuned for future up dates.
Reg,
Great to hear about this exciting opportunity in Toronto. I am just wrapping up a CDOI pilot with adult MH services in Vancouver and will be presenting the results to management soon. There have been some interesting successes and challenges on this journey. I am interested in hearing from you about how things go with the initiative in Scarborough. Hope you will keep us posted.
Cynthia
Sounds like this will be an excellent conference. I look forward to more details and will be marking this one on my calendar.