Q&A with Interior Health’s new CEO

Sylvia Weir was announced last week as the new president and CEO of Interior Health. She had been doing the job on an interim basis since Susan Brown stepped down in June. She was previously the organization’s chief financial officer. Vista Radio spoke with her on Thursday.

Congratulations on your appointment. I guess it’s not really a surprise, but did you have any doubt about putting your name forward? 

No, I did not. I have had a lot of experience. I’ve been with Interior Health for more than 20 years and have seen how staff work, how the physicians are so dedicated to their work, and I wanted to be part of that and wanted to help support us moving forward together. 

Tell us a little bit more about yourself. I know you were the past CFO and that you’ve got 25 years in healthcare management. Where was that and in what sort of roles? 

I was part of the National Health Service in the United Kingdom at the beginning of my career as a manager of some of the clinical wards. When I moved to Canada, I sought to be part of the healthcare system here. I did some contract work with Indigenous communities and with hard-to-reach communities in the North Okanagan, and then joined the Interior Health team when it formed in 2001. I began in a contract management capacity, so partnering with our nonprofit and private clinical service providers. Since then I have moved through different roles within finance and partnership development until my last role as a CFO which I was in for five years. 

What are going to be your biggest challenges or priorities? 

Like every other province in Canada and every health system around the world, I think we are challenged with staffing. We have a whole generation of physicians and nursing and other specialist staff coming through that have their own wants and needs and we have a demand that outstrips our supply.

What we also have, though, is an incredible level of dedication. I am so impressed and privileged to work alongside people — and I watched them through the COVID pandemic — who continue to show up every day and continue to serve despite whatever challenges there are, whether it’s sickness on their unit or distress of patients. The people that work in healthcare that serve the public, it’s a fantastic group to be part of. So from my perspective, there are many more opportunities than challenges. 

How do you tackle recruitment? It’s not a new problem, but is there anything more to be done or what is the Interior Health strategy? 

We have different strategies depending on the professions that we’re trying to attract. We have, along with ministry support, been able to provide incentives for people who are willing to work in rural areas, for example, where we have staffing challenges. But we’ve also been doing a little bit more organic work with post-secondary [students] and also with high school students, just trying to explain and encourage interest in working in the healthcare system.

The healthcare system is really wide and really deep. I think perhaps there’s a whole generation of kids that just think about nurses and doctors, but there are so many different careers at so many different levels. So we’ve done more with the education sector over the past few years.

Then in terms of medical staff, a couple of things we’ve done have begun to bear fruit. One is around embracing the different professions that are coming through. Now have the opportunity for nurses to train up as nurse practitioners. We have physician assistants who don’t go through the same level of training, but are a very important part of the team that we didn’t have previously. We are supporting midwives and midwifery training.

So we are embracing the new or newer models of profession coming through the system. Secondly, in terms of medical staff, we have a whole team to support recruitment. There’s an awful lot of steps to jump through whenever you are looking to recruit physicians. There are the first connections and visits. There’s paperwork. There’s issues to deal with the college [of physicians]. So we have put in dedicated supports who understand the specialty we are trying to recruit to and that are very targeted in their recruitment. That’s where we are seeing some success. 

Anything else you’d like to add?

Just that I’m really excited to be in this role and I really look forward to working with the communities and the leaders of those communities so that we create solutions and systems that work for the people that we serve.