When Gabriella isn’t spending time with her three-year-old daughter, she’s supporting health discipline professionals to work collaboratively to ultimately enhance the care we provide to children, youth and their families.
Gabriella’s Holland Bloorview roots run deep! She was a client in the neuromuscular clinic when she was three years old and then later on as a youth she participated in our residential life skills program. Her professional experience here began as a volunteer and moved on to include other roles such as youth mentor, youth facilitator and social worker, where Gabriella was part of a variety of teams including LIFEspan and neuromotor.
After years of experience – both within and beyond our walls – in Gabriella’s current position as a collaborative practice leader, she shares that the role has two main goals: advancing professional practice and supporting interprofessional practice.
She also shares this reflection about the future: “being a social worker will always be the core of who I am and I hope that whatever role I have, I bring with me the social work skills of building trusting relationships with others, listening to concerns and responding to questions. Hopefully years from now I could be a role model for others with disabilities in a leadership role and share my journey and learnings with them.”
Read our interview with Gabriella below to learn about her unique journey from receiving care as a client to helping to enhance care as a collaborative practice leader.
Can you describe your journey at Holland Bloorview so far?
Me and Holland Bloorview go way back! I started as a client in the neuromuscular clinic and then as I got older I participated in the hospital’s residential life skills program which at the time ran in collaboration with Gage Transition to Independent Living. My professional journey here began as a volunteer and it led me to other roles including youth mentor and youth facilitator. After finishing my Master of Social Work (MSW), I worked in the community with adults with spinal cord injuries before landing a job here, where I had the privilege to be part of teams such as LIFEspan, neuromotor, spina bifida & spinal cord injury and cleft lip and palate. While I left Holland Bloorview for a few years to pursue my passion in perinatal social work, I later returned with experience as a professional practice leader for social work in acute care. Then it was upon my return from parental leave where I began my role as a clinical risk specialist before landing my current position as a collaborative practice leader.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Days can look so different and can include facilitating practice councils, meeting with clinicians for consultations, supporting organizational changes in practice e.g. updating documentation templates, reviewing the development of new standards of care and providing overall practice perspective on strategic projects. As the collaborative practice structure provides a framework to support health discipline professionals do their best work, collaborative practice leaders have an important role in ensuring our health discipline professionals’ practice aligns with regulations. I also work closely with clinical operations managers to support recruitment and orientation of new health discipline professionals, while also ensuring that clinicians are credentialed on an annual basis.
Can you identify some of the challenges/barriers you’ve faced in your career here and how the organization supported your professional growth?
Any barriers I have faced are physical barriers and I have had an overall good experience here in terms of having supportive leadership help me navigate my physical disability in a work setting. There are things on a day-to-day basis that are challenging for me; for example, physically setting up a room in preparation for a meeting. As a disabled adult and parent there are lots of things I generally have to plan for and problem solve around. For example, what to do if someone parks in my parking spot in the morning? I have a designated spot where there is ample room to open my ramp and for me to exit the car safely. When the spot is taken, these unexpected things can be hard to navigate. Throughout my many roles here, I’ve been enabled to pursue learning opportunities to increase and further develop my skill set and advance my career. I am grateful to Holland Bloorview for these opportunities.
You are also actively involved with inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, anti-racism (IDEAA) initiatives here at Holland Bloorview. Can you tell us what this means to you?
As a member of the IDEAA taskforce as well as the health equity action team, I believe it’s important to have an inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility and anti-racism lens in all levels of work we do. Passion projects include supporting the hospital’s social needs screening so we can have the data we need to understand what social determinants of health our clients and families require support with.
Can you share a memorable moment or success story that illustrates the impact your work has had on our clients’ lives?
When we received funding through Make Kids Count we had an amazing opportunity to hire staff in many disciplines. We had to come up with a plan to onboard all these new staff members in a short period of time. To use the social work group as an example, it was important to me that they had a chance to get to know each other and be oriented to the resources social workers commonly access to support our families. Every new social worker was matched with a mentor for one-to-one support. Leveraging the expertise that lives at Holland Bloorview, myself and some of the social workers facilitated group orientation sessions that covered: resources and funding for the differing populations, documentation and a review of our hospital’s social worker standards of care. These group sessions were a welcome addition to the one-to-one support model of mentorship and allowed the new team members to get to know each other, meet seasoned staff and know who to ask if they had specific questions about a certain topic.
What keeps you motivated and energized in such a demanding role?
I love hearing about and witnessing the professionals that I support do their best work. I have learned so much being in this role this past year and I've been very grateful for the opportunity to learn from the variety of roles that I support. In this role I am always doing and learning something new which keeps it very exciting! Even though I no longer have a direct clinical role, it really keeps me motivated to remember that if I provide the structure and system for health discipline professionals to do their job well then it is positively impacting client care. Holland Bloorview has some of the most dedicated and expert staff and I am so privileged to support them.
*This interview has been edited for length and brevity.
