The Sun Country Regional Health Authority's staff are gearing up for facility accreditation, as well as planning for a patient safety conference, as recruitment and retention are ongoing as issues for management, the board of trustees heard at their March board meeting on Thursday afternoon.

The review for the three-year accreditation of Sun Country's 28 facilities will take place in the first week of May, so in the meantime the health district's Continuous Quality Improvement regional director Dave Pettitt will be working with staff to ensure they are ready.

Quality improvement is an area "the staff work on, on an ongoing basis. The three-year accreditation review will be reviewing all our good success and make sure we're doing the best we possibly can. It's something we try to live by on a day-to-day basis," said CEO Cal Tant, in his report to the board. He noted that the regional director is also attending a health care forum on quality improvement.

"It's a process that's now becoming very prevalent in health care, looking at more efficient ways of doing things, and doing things better. Mark will be bring us the best quality improvement methods from around the province, as Saskatchewan's Quality Improvement Council is one of the best in the country," added Tant.

The board also approved its strategic plan, and looked at its vision and mission statements to begin a year-long review by the board of the health authority's policies.

The vision statement is for "Healthy People in Healthy Communities", which Tant pointed out is a derivation of Sask Health's vision.

The mission for Sun Country is to provide the best health care through its staff, management and board, he added, and there was a suggestion to add in something about always looking out for patient safety.

"Right across North America, there is so much emphasis on patient safety. We need a statement on the safe provision of health care, knowing that we have to be very careful and make sure nothing untoward happens. The safety of our staff and a safe environment is important, as is the safe delivery of health care, the safe provision of care to all people under our care," said Tant.

Mark Pettitt later told the board Sun Country will be putting on a patient safety conference in October, which will involve every level of the health region, and began the preparation for that with a video series for the board on patient safety, called "First Do No Harm", that will also be shown to the staff to generate discussion.

Earlier, the CEO also gave an update on recruitment and retention, and said the health region has started to see some success in gaining employees, such as diagnostic technicians for facilities in Arcola, Redvers and Lampman, and an X-ray technician for Coronach, and a couple new doctors for Estevan.

The health region paid a recent visit to Weyburn city council, and to career fairs at the Weyburn and Estevan Comp schools, and at Redvers. After the meeting, Tant indicated the Weyburn General Hospital has gained a couple graduate nurses plus a nurse from the Philippines. As the nurses will need some training time, there is no time line yet for reopening the maternity ward, but he said that is an ongoing priority for the health region.

In his report to the board, chairman Earl Kickley noted the board met with Pangman residents to talk about their concerns over a lack of a nurse at the health care centre there.

"We informed them unless they had a brilliant idea of what to do, it would stay the same for now. They were disappointed, but they realized what's going on, I think," said Kickley.