Episode 1: Welcome!

Transcript

Kyla 0:12

​Hi, I'm Kyla. Welcome to my new podcast, shift Conversations on Innovation Improvement in the Canadian Healthcare System. Welcome to my new adventure. I know you're probably busy, so let's get into it. When people talk about the Canadian Healthcare System, the conversation usually starts in the same place. What's broken, what's backlogged, what's underfunded, what's burning people out? And none of that is wrong, but what I notice is how rarely we pause to ask a different question. Not what's failing, but what kind of system are we actually trying to build? Because most of the time the solutions we debate assume the answer is obvious. We assume that if we optimize the existing system, make it a little faster, a little more efficient, a little more digital, we'll somehow arrive at the future. We want incremental change. Pilot projects, quick fixes, layered onto chronic problems, and sometimes incremental change matters. It gives us hope. It improves lives, it improves the experience of the providers. It buys us time, but we are all well past the point of where incremental change can alone carry the weight of what we are placing on this system. Our healthcare system was designed for different era, different demographics, different diseases, and different care expectations, and yet we keep asking it to do more, more complex, more integrated, more humane work without fundamentally rethinking its design. I worked with a colleague who used to say, we keep trying to fix and improve this car, but what if we actually need a boat? Or a spaceship. We never have that kind of conversation. That's why I decided to do this podcast. What if we did have those kinds of conversations? Shift is about advancing a different kind of dialogue, one that looks beyond crisis management towards the future, that we actually need to build a future where care is organized around people and communities, not institutions where prevention and wellbeing matter as much as treatment. Where technology supports relationships instead of replacing them. And where equity isn't an afterthought, it's foundational. But here's the thing, we don't talk about enough. New systems don't emerge because the old ones agree to let go. They emerge because people start doing things differently, often, quietly, often, at the margins often in spite of the system rather than because of it, asking for forgiveness rather than permission. Across Canada and around the world, there are clinicians, leaders, patients, and communities who are already building new models of care. They're integrating services differently. They're redistributing power. They're challenging professional boundaries, and they're designing for complexity instead of pretending it doesn't exist, and too often these efforts remain isolated. Interesting, but not connected. Promising, but not scaled, admired, but not invested in If we really want transformation, we can't just highlight innovation. We have to network it, nourish it, and learn from it. We have to create space for innovators to find one another. We have to take their work seriously, even when it makes us uncomfortable, and we have to be honest about what stands in their way, in our way, really, because what's holding us back isn't a lack of ideas, it's misaligned incentives. It's governance structures that value control over learning. It's a culture that treats risk as recklessness and failure as unacceptable. And sometimes, let's be honest, it's a fear of losing what's familiar. Even when we know it's no longer working, it's like the devil we know is better than the devil. We don't know. This podcast is not about laying blame. It's about challenging the status quo because a system that cannot question itself eventually cannot sustain itself. In this podcast, my goal is to host conversations with people who are pushing against the dominant assumptions about healthcare, people who are testing bold ideas, people who are redesigning care in ways that. Don't neatly fit into existing boxes. People who are proving through practice, not theory, that different futures are possible. Some of what you may hear will feel hopeful, and some of it might feel unsettling, and that's intentional because progress doesn't come from comfort. It comes from curiosity, courage, and connection. If you're working inside the system and feeling the tension between what you are asked to do and what you know is needed, this podcast is for you. If you're experimenting, innovating, or quietly pushing for change, this podcast is for you. And if you care about the future of the Canadian healthcare System, not just its survival, but its transformation, this podcast is for you. But to do this, I need your help. So here's my invitation. If you are working in healthcare or alongside it and see something that matters, a model that's quietly working, a redesign, that's challenging assumptions, a hard truth, no one wants to say aloud. A question that keeps you up at night. I wanna hear about it not published or polished success stories, not political spin. I'm interested in the real work, the experiments, the tensions, the trade-offs, the moments where people realize the old way isn't good enough anymore. You don't have to have all the answers. You don't need to be a professional podcaster, have any experience doing this. You don't need a fancy title that sounds impressive. If you're pushing at the edges of the system or feeling the strain of holding it together, you're part of this conversation. Because if we're gonna build new systems, we have to start finding each other. New ideas don't scale because they're perfect. They scale because they're shared and someone hears them and thinks. We could try that here. I believe that there are stories across this country and beyond that could change the way we think about care, about leadership, about what's actually possible. Many of them just haven't been connected yet. Shift is my attempt to do that, and I can't do it alone. If there's a conversation you think needs to happen or a person whose work deserves to be heard, or a question that the system keeps avoiding, reach out. Tell me what you're seeing. Tell me what you're trying. Tell me what's at stake. This podcast is about the future. We're already standing in and the future doesn't arrive fully formed. It's built slowly, collectively, and often by people who don't realize how much they matter. If that's you or someone you know, I hope you'll be in touch. You can reach me at Shift Podcast canada@gmail.com, on LinkedIn or on my website, kda consulting.ca. I'm new to this, so I'm also learning. It's taken me like over an hour to record this first podcast, maybe two, and I'm also scared to try this, but being brave and courageous is what we're all about, right. So this is shift and this is just the beginning.