Q&A with Dr. Sarah Jarmain
We’re excited to officially introduce St. Joe's new Chief of Staff and Vice President of Medical and Academic Affairs, Dr. Sarah Jarmain! Dr. Jarmain has a wealth of clinical, academic and leadership experience in health care, with a focus on driving health system design and transformation through quality improvement, informatics and human-centred design. Her previous roles include Clinical Lead for the Middlesex London Ontario Health Team, London-area’s equivalent to the Greater Hamilton Health Network. As a psychiatrist, she has worked in various roles through the past 23 years with St. Joseph’s Health Care London, and since 2001 as a physician administrator, in leadership roles such as Chair of the Medical Advisory Committee, Director of Medical Quality, and for 10 years as Site Chief for the St. Joseph’s mental health care programs. Her academic roles included Associate Professor and Interim Vice-Chair Clinical in the Department of Psychiatry at Western University.
Learn more about what excites Dr. Jarmain joining our St. Joe’s team, alongside Deputy Chief of Staff Dr. Greg Rutledge, and what she is thinking about when it comes to the future of health care and technology, below.
Join us in giving Dr. Sarah Jarmain a warm welcome to our hospital!
What are you looking forward to most working at St. Joe’s?
One of the biggest things that I keep hearing about is how wonderful the people, the leadership team and the culture is. I come from another St. Joe’s organization and initial impressions are that values are very much aligned, and there are similar values and mission. St. Joe’s Hamilton is an organization that’s done some really innovative things. I appreciate learning how an organization does things differently and the opportunity to work with the people. To me, leadership is about relationships, it’s really about getting to know people and understanding how I can help people achieve the vision they want.
Can you share anything about your experience working in healthcare during the pandemic?
The pandemic has been very challenging in terms of the “always on” nature and the burnout that can create, but despite that, I have seen people really stepping in, stepping up and coming forward with fantastic ideas. The ability to cut through the red tape and get things done has been an inspiration. When the pandemic was first declared, I had been doing some work on a strategy for virtual care, which was supposed to be a three-year strategy.
I was seconded to a team to develop a rapid implementation of virtual care across two hospitals, and that was an incredible experience in terms of seeing what ideas people brought forward. Things that I would have assumed could never have been done, were done.
For example, an anesthesiologist wanted to turn 70% of pre-admit assessments into virtual. I thought, really can that work? And yes, very much so! For me it was seeing the partnership between the technology team and the clinical staff, physicians and leaders and everyone wanting to help out and say how do we get this done, at a time where you could not get web cams and other things like that. It was truly about looking at creative and innovative ways of working with technology so we could best serve patients and families.
What have you learned about yourself as a healthcare leader?
I have always enjoyed taking on new things, but the pandemic really pushed me to say how do we get out of our comfort zone, work with new and different people, work with new and different ideas, and the ability to make it up as you go.
I read a book around the time the pandemic began called “The Lean Startup”, and I thought that’s what we’re doing, we’re using those principles. It was saying we’re not going to get it perfect, but can we get it good enough to start rolling it out and then using a continuous quality improvement approach to keep improving it so that it meets the needs in the way we want it to.
We understand you are a strong advocate for the effective integration of technology into clinical care, what does this mean for you?
I often say that when we look at technology and health care, there’s the technology piece, the people piece and the process piece and lots of people get fixated on the technology piece. Technology is exciting, and I understand some of what’s needed in the background to make it work, but for me it’s really about focusing on the people and the process. Technology should be an enabler of good care, but it’s not an end on its own.
I think that partnering with patients, families, frontline clinicians, physicians and learners in the implementation of something new is really key, but especially when it looks at technology, because although it’s supposed to make our lives easier, often it can make it harder. So, we need to pay attention to those workflows and making sure we’re not adding additional burden when adding something new.
What has been your most memorable experience in health care?
It’s hard because I’ve been working for coming up on 24 years, and I would say that one of the experiences that really shines through is actually in an academic context. Many years ago, I was the director of Undergraduate Education in Psychiatry, and I wanted to help the medical students understand patient experience. I invited a couple of patients to present to the medical students, and I remember one of the patients who did a fabulous job and talked about their struggles with depression and what had been important in their care. As I was leaving the medical school I ran into them and they said ‘I just have to thank you.’ After the session they grabbed a few minutes and sat on the bench outside, and one of the medical students had come up to them and had shared that they suddenly realized that they weren’t alone in their depression, the medical students’ depression. This felt like a permission to talk about it.
For the patient, and for the medical student, the ability to connect and hear from someone else’s experience was very valuable. It taught me the importance of working with patients as partners in terms of their own care, but also saying how do we invite them to help in other ways of designing and improving the system and our education.
Who do you admire and why?
This was a tough one, but I think I’m going to talk about my grandmother. My grandmother lived to 102 and 6 months to the day and died at her kitchen table. She was an incredible advocate for individuals who may not have had the privilege or experiences she had.
She worked a lot with newcomers to the city of London, and was involved in international housing and all sorts of programs in what we’d now call diversity, inclusion and equity – back then we didn’t really have those names for it. She was on the planning committee for opening the first daycare in London and had hate mail because people felt she was disrupting the family unit, but she thought it was really, really important that women had options in terms of going to work and knowing their kids were going to be safe. She was the head of the organizing committee to elect the first female Alderman to Council in London. She lived her life with a focus on learning and growth and that’s one of my key values.
I remember when she was in her 70s and 80s that she was determined she was going to learn how to use the computer, and she actually got to the point where she went to Best Buy to purchase her own new computer. Previous to that, we’d given her used ones, but she decided she wanted her own laptop. So, the young man took her through all the options and she said “I just need a moment. For someone who grew up in the depression, to spend this money on myself for this piece of technology is big.” Her motto was you should learn two new things every year and that really has been something that has inspired me to say let’s not get stagnant, but keep learning and growing and age should not be a barrier.
Do you have a favourite quote?
I have lots of quotes that I really enjoy but one I encountered when I was a medical student here in Hamilton, was from a book by Bernie Siegel and the quote is,
“In the face of uncertainty, there is nothing wrong with hope.”
I did a little bit of research and it turns out he didn’t initiate that quote, rather it was a physician, Carl Simonton, but it’s a quote that I’ve come back to many times in work situations and personal situations. It acknowledges there’s lots of times that we’re anxious and we’re scared about what’s ahead, but there’s always ways of finding the hope in the situation. So, I describe myself as a pragmatic optimist.
What is your go-to Tim Horton’s order?
Dark roast with one cream.
Where can people follow you on social media?