Beyond the Mask

Ontario’s Anesthesiologists is working on solutions for some of our health-care system’s biggest challenges and supporting our members who are engaging with this goal. We call this going “Beyond the Mask” and we believe that it demonstrates the value our specialty brings to medicine. 

Through our Beyond the Mask initiatives, we aim to strengthen the leadership role of anesthesiologists within the health system while delivering the highest standards of innovative, safe, and sustainable patient care.

With the support of our incredible Beyond the Mask volunteers, our first phase included leadership initiatives, road shows to anesthesia departments across the province, piloting Oji Emotion Life Lab’s app to enhance emotional intelligence, creating our Choosing Wisely Implementation Guide, developing our ongoing SolvingPain project and more.

Our second phase centred around volunteer working groups focused on strategic initiatives related to anesthesia health human resources, leadership development and environmental sustainability.

Learn more about past and present Beyond the Mask initiatives below and please reach out if you’re an Ontario anesthesiologist who is interested in helping us go Beyond the Mask.

Current & Past Initiatives

Ontario’s Anesthesiologists supports all sustainable practices that fulfill the dual goals of providing high-quality patient care and protecting our planet's health. To reach those goals, we launched this working group, which has quickly grown to include over 30 volunteers. Together, they have engaged in a number of activities aimed at greening our profession and hospitals and have forged partnerships with other environmentally focused organizations as well as connections with politicians and other key decision makers.

SolvingPain is our digital harm-prevention initiative that aims to reduce the escalating opioid and pain management crisis in Canada through safer opioid prescribing practices and better pain control practices. Its primary tool, the Perioperative Pain Management Pathway, features concise evidence-based pain management best practices for over 50 common surgeries. SolvingPain.ca is powered by our members. Let us know if you are interested in joining our 2024 Review Panel, which will be updating the site.

To help address our growing concerns around anesthesia human resources, we brought together a group of community and academic anesthesiologists to form this working group. It featured representation from across the province as well as from CAS and worked on a number of topics including defining anesthesiology as a medical role. Its key accomplishments included a position statement that highlighted solutions for our concerns and that generated an impressive amount of media attention.

 

Ontario’s Anesthesiologists supports our members through a variety of leadership initiatives, such as our free webinar series on Health System Fundamentals for The Anesthesiologist and access to our Leadership Development Grant Program for individuals or groups pursuing leadership training. With the support of our Leadership Development Working Group, we also developed our Leadership Development resource page where members can learn about physician leadership resources, courses and conferences. Through these initiatives, we aim increase the number of anesthesiologists in leadership positions.

In June 2017, we launched our Choosing Wisely Implementation Guide in June 2017. This document supports conversations and actions to reduce unnecessary tests, treatments and procedures. Using a case study approach, it includes templates, tools and change management suggestions to enable all hospitals to achieve the benefits of improved patient care. The entire guide is now online and ready to be implemented by physicians and hospitals across the province. An update published one year later, in the summer of 2018, provides additional case studies and information about HQO’s Hospital Services Report.

Help Us Go Beyond the Mask

We’re looking in particular for:

For details on current opportunities, please email info@ontariosanesthesiologists.ca.

Celebrating Members Who Are Going Beyond the Mask

Learn more about a few of our members who are going Beyond the Mask.

The Public Website for the Section on Anesthesiology of the Ontario Medical Association is intended to give general information about who Ontario’s Anesthesiologists are and what they do. This website is NOT intended to be a source of medical advice.