Earlier this winter, DalEM Saint John organized and hosted two “town hall” meetings, which were the first in what is planned to be an ongoing series of open conversations in the department.

Members of the DalEM Saint John team at the December 2023 town hall meeting, held at Shadow Lawn Inn, Rothesay, NB just before the holidays.

These meetings provided an opportunity for the emergency physicians to get together as a group and pose questions to the department’s leadership team as well as the the CEO, Chief of Staff and Medical Director of the Saint John Regional Hospital. 

“This is in support of developing an open and transparent governance culture,” says Dr. Paul Atkinson, who heads the Emergency Medicine department in Saint John. “The conversations were refreshingly honest and covered everything from scheduling, recruitment, rural site cover, wellness and the vision for emergency medicine in the region. The town halls have led to a re-evaluation of zone responsibilities and an offloading of some of the clinical pressures on the group.”

Dr. Atkinson says DalEM Saint John intends to hold two to three town hall meetings each year.