Events and Learning

Throughout the year we will invite members of our community to share their expertise, stories and lived experiences with our staff. This is an opportunity for growth, reflection and learning as speakers discuss important equity issues impacting our workplace and the communities we serve.

An article will be shared regularly to challenge our thinking and provide us with an opportunity to learn more about different aspects of inclusion, diversity and equity.

This learning series supports the Mackenzie Health community in recognizing unconscious bias, delivering culturally responsive health care, understanding our roles as allies in health care, cultivating belonging in the work place and working towards intercultural communication and inclusive language.

Uncovering Unconscious Bias

This session highlights how the messages we’re taught from birth about race, class, gender, gender identity, ethnicity, age, physical abilities, religion, sexual orientation and other aspects of human diversity generate stereotypes that significantly influence our perceptions and interactions without our conscious awareness.

Learning Objectives

• Assess the impact of unconscious bias in the workplace.
• Reflect on our own unconscious biases and how they influence our interactions with patients and colleagues.
• Develop strategies to challenge unconscious bias in the workplace and our daily lives.

Ensuring Culturally Responsive Care

This session explores how our cultural values intersect with the way we interact with patients and colleagues and opportunities to offer culturally responsive and inclusive care to our diverse communities.

Learning Objectives

• Examine how our cultural lens impacts our interactions with patients and colleagues
• Identify components of observable and unobservable characteristics of culture
• Explore strategies and resources to facilitate culturally responsive care

The Role of Allyship in Health care

The session emphasizes the importance of allyship and what it means to be an effective ally in the health care community. Participants learn how being an ally can ensure safe and inclusive care for the diverse communities we work with and alongside.

Learning Objectives

• Reflect on the importance of safe and inclusive patient care
• Recognize our roles as allies in the Mackenzie Health community
Identify what we can say and do to be effective allies to diverse communities

Cultivating Belonging in the Workplace

This session explores ways to cultivate belonging in the workplace for our patients and colleagues.

Learning Objectives

• Discuss the importance of belonging
• Identify what it means to create a culture of belonging
• Explore ways to cultivate belonging in the workplace 

Intercultural Communication

This session identifies factors that impact intercultural communication and explore strategies for effective intercultural communication in the workplace.

Learning Objectives

• Explore barriers to intercultural communication
• Reflect on interpersonal communication stages
• Identify communication dimensions cross culturally 
• Discuss strategies for effective intercultural communication 

Language Matters: Inclusive Language

This session highlights the importance of using inclusive language and its connection to creating safe spaces. This session will explore guiding principles for using inclusive language and ways to respond when we use or hear language that is not inclusive. 

Learning Objectives

• Identify the importance of using inclusive language and its connection with creating safe spaces
• Explore guiding principles for using inclusive language
• Identify ways to respond when we use or hear language that is not inclusive

When staff begin their careers at Mackenzie Health, they will be introduced to core concepts of inclusion and diversity as they are acclimated to Mackenzie Health’s culture.  During Corporate Orientation, staff will receive training on Unconscious Bias where they examine the impact of unconscious bias on their work. As part of mandatory online training, staff will also complete Cultural Competency Training that will enhance knowledge and awareness of cultures that make up Mackenzie Health to ensure there is a shared understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion.