Healthcare Leadership Certificate
Dates
January – May 2025 (dates by each of the 5 modules listed below)
Cost
$930
(50% off pilot promotion for healthcare professionals; regular price $1,860)
Format
In-person (5 half-day sessions)
Location
SMU Campus, Halifax, NS
Whether you are an emerging leader or an experienced professional, our Healthcare Leadership Certificate will strengthen your ability to lead diverse teams, manage complex situations, and drive meaningful change.
This certificate, broken out over five modules, will enhance your leadership capabilities and position you for success in the dynamic world of healthcare.
A certificate of completion will be issued to participants who complete all five modules of the certificate program.
In this series, you will:
- Understand the fundamentals of leadership specific to the healthcare industry, including the unique challenges and opportunities faced by healthcare leaders.
- Learn core leadership principles such as strategic vision, decision-making, and ethical leadership that are crucial for leading effectively in healthcare settings.
- Develop skills to lead high-performing teams, foster collaboration, and motivate staff in a healthcare environment.
- Gain practical tools and strategies to manage and resolve conflicts constructively, ensuring a positive and productive workplace.
- Learn how to lead inclusively by embracing diversity, promoting equity, and creating a culture where all team members feel valued and empowered.
5 Modules (half-day sessions)
- Module 1: Principles of Leadership
January 10, 1pm – 5pm- This module focuses on the behaviors associated with effective leadership in organizations. The major theories of leadership are discussed with particular emphasis on modern theories that have been shown to be effective in healthcare environments.
- Module 2: Leadership in the Healthcare Setting
January 24, 1pm – 5pm- This module addresses practical approaches to applying principles of leadership in a variety of healthcare settings, recognizing the unique and not-so-unique challenges inherent in these environments.
- Module 3: Leading Teams
March 14, 1pm – 5pm- This module offers strategies for building high-performance teams by examining teamwork dynamics, collaboration skills, diversity, psychological safety, and inter-team interactions to enhance group outcomes.
- Module 4: Inclusive Leadership
April 25, 1pm – 5pm- This module aims to help leaders develop and sustain their supportive and inclusive leadership behaviours, focusing on creating a high-functioning diverse, equitable, and accessible work environment.
- Module 5: Conflict Styles
May 16, 1pm – 5pm- This module presents evidence-based theories and tools to help participants understand, analyze, and develop their conflict handling and empathic style as a leader. Participants will identify which styles are prominent in their toolkit, how they respond to stressful and conflictual situations, and the strengths and opportunities for growth. The end goal is to increase the flexibility of leaders’ skills, so they can make conscious choices about what response fits their goals best.
Instructors
A native of New Waterford, Nova Scotia, Kevin is a graduate of Dalhousie (B.Sc. Honours Psychology), Saint Mary’s (M.Sc. in Applied Psychology), King’s (MFA in Creative Nonfiction) and Queen’s (PhD in Organizational Psychology) universities. He teaches courses in organizational and occupational health psychology as well as courses in research methodology and statistics. Kevin is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the International Association for Applied Psychology and the Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology. He is a former President of the Canadian Psychological Association. His research interests include leadership and occupational health psychology. Kevin is widely recognized for his expertise in occupational stress and his contributions to fostering healthy workplace environments through effective leadership.
Dr. Gary P. Ernest is a distinguished rural family physician who has served the Liverpool, Nova Scotia community for over four decades. As an Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at Dalhousie University and a Fellow of the College of Family Physicians of Canada, he has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to medical education and excellence in family medicine. Dr. Ernest's extensive leadership experience includes serving as President of Doctors Nova Scotia (2019-2020) and holding numerous leadership positions in healthcare administration. Currently pursuing an Executive Doctorate of Business Administration at Saint Mary's University, he continues to serve in multiple roles, including Medical Director of Hillsview Acres long-term care facility and consultant physician for the RCMP and Transport Canada's Marine Medical Division. His contributions to healthcare and physician advocacy, particularly during the early stages of the pandemic, were recognized with the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal in 2023. Dr. Ernest's diverse expertise is further exemplified by his MBA from Saint Mary's University and his ongoing work as a WCB Consultant Physician.
Dr. John Fiset received his Ph.D. in Business Administration from the John Molson School of Business, Concordia University. Before joining the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University in 2020, where he serves as an Assistant Professor in the Management Department, he taught at the John Molson School of Business and the Faculty of Business Administration at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. His research interests focus on how leaders influence intragroup workplace dynamics, multilingualism at work, and experiential management education. In addition, he has consulted for a number of organizations in the areas of leadership, motivation, and decision-making.
Dr. Day is a founding member of two research and community outreach centres: The CN Centre for Occupational Health and Safety and the Centre for Leadership Excellence. Arla chairs the Nova Scotia Psychological Healthy Workplace Program committee, and she is on the Steering Committee for the American Psychological Association’s Business of Practice Network, which oversees the state, provincial, and national healthy workplace awards and programs.
Dr. Day currently teaches graduate level courses in Psychometrics (test validation and development) and Organizational Psychology, and her past teaching has included Personnel Psychology, Statistics, and Introduction to Psychology.
Dr. Gilin's training is in Industrial/Organizational Psychology focused on what fosters productive/healthy versus unproductive/unhealthy conflict in the workplace. Her research focuses on organizational conflict, negotiation, and mediation, the implications of conflict for work stress and well-being, how personality and thinking styles influence conflict handling, inter- and intra- group conflict dynamics, and organizational change interventions.
Recent projects have examined the distinct operation of cognitive perspective-taking versus empathy in conflictual interactions, how to decrease incivility among workers in high-stress work environments (i.e., nursing) over the long-term, and how disrespectful work group norms can hasten the effects of work stressors on physical and mental employee strain. Debra has a strong interest in applying basic social psychological research to real organizational problems, and enjoy teaching, learning about, and using advanced statistical methodologies such as structural equations modeling and hierarchical linear modeling.