Our Hospital’s smallest patients are showing their holiday spirit! With the help of our dedicated care team, some of our smallest patients were dressed in festive holiday outfits, bringing smiles to families and staff alike. These moments are powerful reminders of resilience, love, and the strength of littlest patients and their families.
We are grateful to the parents of the newborns and staff for letting us share these wonderful photos.
The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) team at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre works tirelessly to ensure families are supported while separated from their babies.
A big THANK YOU to the NICU staff for taking the photos and creating this festive holiday scene.
We all play a vital role in helping to advance our strategic priorities and in achieving our vision of Exceptional care for every patient, every time. In order to increase awareness and help everyone understand how we are progressing on Strategic Plan 2026, we have developed and are distributing these quarterly strategic initiative highlights.
The full list of each “Quarterly Strategic Initiative Highlights” can be found on the intranet.
In our high-pressure environment, clear communication and patient trust are critical to safety. To strengthen person centred communication across our organization, we are expanding on the established best practice of NOD (Name, Occupation, Do). To foster more meaningful patient staff connections, enhance trust, and promote a compassionate and empathetic care environment, PFCC proposed expanding NOD to NODDING (Name, Occupation, Do, Develop trust through Interacting, Noticing, and being Genuine).
This is a core patient safety tool. Building patient trust quickly is proven to improve patient compliance with care plans, help reduce errors and preventable readmissions. The alignment with existing practice increases the likelihood of successful implementation. It reduces resistance to change, promotes consistency, and makes it easier for staff to integrate enhanced empathetic behaviors into their routine workflows.
NODDING offers a scalable and practical tool to embed these values across the organization and elevates what is already known, fostering sustainability and long-term engagement.
What’s next: Implementation will begin with a pilot in a selected unit to evaluate feasibility, staff engagement, and impact on patient experience. Insights from the pilot will be used to guide refinements and inform broader organizational rollout.
The Showcase of Health Research is an annual event highlighting research, evaluation, and quality improvement initiatives that advance the health and well-being of Northwestern Ontarians. The event features podium and poster presentations, along with opportunities to network and engage with health professionals, researchers, analysts, students, and scientists from across the community and the region.
The 2026 Showcase of Health Research is free to attend, and a lunch will be provided. However, registration capacity is limited and fills every year, so we encourage early registration to secure your spot.
The Adult Mental Health team at Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre gathered in the outpatient department for the annual Purple Giving Tree Lighting Ceremony, reaffirming their commitment to harm reduction, trauma-informed care, and anti-stigma practices.
The ceremony opened with welcoming hand drummers, followed by the lighting of the Purple Giving Tree, which symbolizes the harms and overdoses associate with substance use in our community.
Staff were invited to place pledge bulbs on the tree, reflecting personal and team commitments for the year ahead.
The event coincided with an Adult Mental Health donation campaign in support of the Regional Food Distribution Association. Staff contributed non-perishable food items, with over $1,900 raised to date.
The transition to M365 involves moving our local files to the cloud with OneDrive and SharePoint. With over 1,000,000+ files in our local storage, this transition involves a lot of file preparation work.
Learn the new system limitations to properly prepare your files:
Special Character Restrictions: The following characters cannot be used in file or folder names: ” * : < > ? / \ | % .
OneDrive Storage Limit: 10GB for Office Workers/2GB for Frontline Staff for personal file storage.
File Path Limits: All file paths should be ≤256 characters and have a maximum file depth of five to seven folders.
Office File Incompatibility: Old Office 97-2003 files and templates must be converted to newest formats.
Remember to:
Delete old files and convert old formats.
Rename long file names and remove special characters.
Staff from TBRHSC’s Capital & Facilities and Support Services departments collected more than 680 lbs of non-perishable food items for the Dew Drop Inn.
Staff at TBRHSC embody the spirit of the season with their annual food drive in support of St. Andrews Dew Drop In. Food was delivered yesterday (December 17), and the volunteers at St. Andrews Dew Drop Inn were thrilled see the team and how much food was being donated, and continue to express their appreciation of TBRHSC staff’s efforts year after year. The Capital & Facilities and Support Services departments have had a friendly food drive challenge for five years now.
Thank you everyone who brought in donations, your generosity will help provide meals to community members in need. A big congratulations to staff in ICP Admin, who took the weight win for this year!
Amount of Food Collected (By Department)
Switchboard – 73.7 lbs
Capital Planning – 22.4 lbs
ICP Admin – 238 lbs
Housekeeping/Portering/Laundry – 111 lbs
Purchasing – 21.3 lbs
Stores – 17.2 lbs
Nutrition and Food Services – 141.2 lbs
Maintenance – 44.2 lbs
TOTAL = 687.9 lbs of non-perishable food items for St. Andrews Dew Drop Inn
As part of our commitment to patient and family centred care, we are pleased to offer a warmer, more comfortable way to wait for pick-up from the temporary passenger pick-up area.
A monitor has been installed in the West entry that displays a live feed of the pick-up zone. Patients may wait indoors and exit the building once they see their ride arrive.
Please note that Thursday, January 1, 2026, is New Year’s Day, a statutory holiday, and banks and financial institutions will be closed. As a result, employees will be paid one day earlier on Wednesday, December 31, 2025.
