CEO Blog: Our commitment to our people: Ongoing learning

At PRHC, we know that people are our most important resource. We understand and appreciate your vital role in caring for our patients, advancing the organization and fulfilling the commitments identified in our strategic plan.

We are therefore committed to becoming a learning organization that encourages education and training, promotes the growth and development of staff, and creates an environment of engagement in which our employees are fully involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work.

One of the concrete ways we have committed to meeting these organizational objectives is through the construction of a new Learning Centre for PRHC, a project that was approved by the Board of Directors last month, and is scheduled to open its doors in August 2016.

The new Learning Centre will be constructed in approximately 8600 square feet of space in the north end of the second level of the hospital, and will be purpose-built to serve multidisciplinary healthcare training and education initiatives.

A flexible design will allow the Learning Centre to be converted from several smaller, clinical-focused classrooms into one larger meeting room with an anticipated capacity of up to 200 people – an ideal space to host guest speakers and staff education sessions, Grand Rounds and Leadership Forum, among others.

The Learning Centre, like so many things at PRHC, will be made possible in large part through the generosity of our community: we are grateful for a $2.4 million commitment from the PRHC Foundation to support this project with the help of our donors. The hospital will contribute an additional $900,000 toward completion of the project. Following an RFP process and the initial planning and design work, construction is expected to begin in December of this year.

I will keep you up to date as work on the Learning Centre progresses – in the meantime, please ask your manager or contact our Communications department if you have any questions. I am so pleased to see this project move forward, and about what it will mean for the people of PRHC, for our patients and our community, when the doors to this space are opened next year.