MTP Podcast Episode 3: Natalie St. Pierre
Natalie St. Pierre
Director, Communications and Stakeholder Relations, CAPA
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MTP Podcast Episode 3: Natalie St. Pierre
Released: November 11, 2017
Length: 24 minutes
Legend: Rebecca Mueller (Becky)=B, Rachael Thompson=R, Natalie St. Pierre=N
~MUSIC INTRO~
B: Welcome to Meet the PAs podcast. Here the experiences of seasoned PAs, up and coming development of policy from industry leaders, and the exploration of those new to the career. Interviews done with a Canadian twist and maple syrup
~MUSIC INTRO CONTINUES~
B: Hello everybody, Rachael and I are coming to you again from the CAPA conference in Ottawa. And we're here today with Natalie St. Pierre and she is...,her official title is the Director of Communications and Stakeholder Relations of CAPA, correct?
N: That’s correct.
B: Alright, well welcome, thanks for being with us today.
N: Thanks for having me
B: Okay, so tell everybody just so they know, what exactly does your job title mean you do?
N: Well, a lot
All: [LAUGHTER]
N: Were actually a small group, a small team, we like to say were small but mighty. There's 5 staff, 1 who’s part time. So in my role, really I oversee all the communications and marketing initiatives for CAPA. I also have a role in advocacy and stakeholder relations, so developing new relationships, formations with medical associations, some of the other healthcare representation like college of family physicians of Canada, the Royal College. That entails most of my role. I do daily communication with membership. I mean, you name it. There’s not one hat that I typically don’t wear.
All: [LAUGHTER]
N: But that’s not to say that you know that all the staff work very hard and many of us work various roles. For example, our Manager of Operations is also a Manager of Certifications, Sandra. And then we’ve got a great team, Kristy and Kendra and of course Patrick our Executive Director who provides great leadership for the association.
B: And how long have you been with CAPA?
N: Oh, since 2011
B: A long time actually
N: Yes, a long time. It’s kept me busy, there's always lots to do, lots of challenges, it’s always exciting. Especially with an emerging profession such as Physician Assistants and seeing that the work that you're doing is really making an impact
B: So does your role end up being pretty political, being that you're dealing with stakeholder relations? I imagine that you're dealing with a lot of politics.
N: Yeah, definitely. Because advocacy is one of the priorities for members, it's in fact the most important priority identified by our members, we spend a lot of time in advocacy. And that includes government relations, primarily. Recently, we hosted a PA awareness day in Ontario, we have another one coming in BC, we’ve already done one in Ontario in the past, and one in BC, looking at spreading that out in other jurisdictions as well. Manitoba, New Brunswick, other provinces where we see there might be an opportunity. That's not to say that any provinces that we haven't mentioned are not a priority as well. When we see opportunities we do take them. For example, we did an advocacy campaign in Quebec recently, where our chapter president interviewed for [INAUDIBLE]... key political representatives. I’d say on a weekly basis, our executive director is flying across the country meeting with various stakeholders, the governments, some of the stakeholder groups. Sometimes I'm participating in those meetings and helping facilitate those discussions and sometimes I work behind the scenes to make it happen. And you know of course we need to acknowledge our volunteers as well. We have a very dedicated board of directors and a lot of our chapter representatives or chapter presidents are really instrumental in those discussions and they are actually our boots on the ground. So they can see what's going on across the country.
B: Mhm
N: And PAs in general. At our lobby day in Ontario, we had 70 PAs. We did have a strong political representation at our actual lobby event. We did have some MOAs. There are different acronyms in different provinces
B: They have the same role
N: Same role. So MOAs, members of legislative assembly. So essentially, we had some attend but we didn’t have the representation anticipated. There was another event coinciding. However, we did have a member of their political staff who did attend, we had some great discussions. And then we had a number of individual meetings with Oliver [INAUDIBLE] and the ones that have the portfolio standing committee on health. So great discussions.
B: Yes and how did it go in Quebec?
N: So Quebec, we didn’t do a PA awareness event. We actually did an advocacy campaign where we did a social media campaign, we launched a press release, our Quebec chapter president was available for interviews [INAUDIBLE]. It was exposure, but on a smaller scale, but it was still visibility and from my perspective, any visibility is good, provided that it’s positive.
B: Most PAs are not very political. And we’re not politically very inclined. Could you explain what the goals of a lobby day are? How they can be impactful and how we can become more involved into that to be impactful while we’re there and maybe encourage more of us to take a day off work to go to them in the future.
N: Certainly, I can answer that question. First of all, I just want to say I don't think it’s just about lobby days. I think there’s lots of other things that PAs can do other than lobby days because obviously it’s not a reality that people can get the day off work and they might not even live in a jurisdiction where they can travel and can afford to travel and all the expenses associated. When you're at a lobby day, I think the most important thing is that it’s not supposed to be rehearsed right? PAs know that they’re doing good work, it's been demonstrated in the recent conference for Canada studies. I mean it was just really reaffirming what we already knew, but we needed some sort of national study, a [INAUDIBLE] study that we can move forward with and something we can use when we’re discussing with government and stakeholders, and even the public and the media and showing that PAs do add value, they’re cost effective, and improve access. One thing is, is knowing the messaging. So when you are having these discussions, whether you're going to a lobby day, whether you're meeting with an MOA or MPP, or whether you're meeting with an employer, the most important thing is to use these messages and to help you explain your value. But really, I think personal stories are more important and personal circumstances. For example, if you're working in a particular setting and you're gathering statistical data, and you know you’re making a difference. For example, because of you being introduced to the program, now you can do home care visits for seniors, which you were never able to do before. There’s been other studies where they've demonstrated wait times have been reduced by half in the ER. So those sorts of statistics that you can gather and that you can bring with you to these individual meetings will really speak to the need for PAs. I think it's very important to have evidence and to demonstrate that to political representatives, stakeholders that you're dealing with.
B: So are you recommending, are you hoping that more PAs can actually start recording data and evidence within their own practice?
N: I mean, that would be ideal. Not necessarily everyone is able to do that but we really would encourage that. I think we’re starting to see more and more people do that because we're starting to see more people conduct studies, research. Some people don't have a research background, so they’re just basically tracking their activities, tracking their tasks, and demonstrating how it's adding to the practice and helping improve patient care. So I think all of those examples that you can bring forward are great. They may be anecdotal, or they may be for specific circumstances but any evidence that you have to demonstrate, I think that’s really important. And absolutely we encourage PAs to keep doing that, that is just a complement to the study that we’ve already done
B: And for those PAs who are interested in contributing and trying to do that, are you available and is CAPA available to help guide people through that?
N: We’re certainly available to help guide people. We are not...our mandate necessarily is not research, that is why we hired the conference board of Canada to do this work for us because we just don’t have the expertise within our association to conduct research. In terms of any help that people need and support, an example is from an actual PA day that we have coming up, which we'll talk a little bit about when I present the advocacy presentation on Saturday, but we have a toolkit that we’ve put together for our members. So we realized that we need to do a lot of advocacy work but if we are asking our members to go out and advocate on behalf of their profession, then we need to provide them with some tools that they can use.
B: Right, right
N: They’re very good at communications, they’re very good at advocacy, and others aren’t, but Included in that is a presentation, a slide deck that talks about the value of PAs, describes the profession, and a little bit of details just very generic but it also has a lot of key points. Posters, taglines for social media, a video that we have now, that we’ve also produced in French, which will launch tomorrow as well.
B: That’s really exciting
N: Yeah! These were all visuals, and most of the tools that we've developed are largely for either face to face presentations or social media. We’re finding more and more social media is being the preferred method of communication
R: For sure.
N: It’s affordable, it doesn't really cost anything, it works quickly, you have the ability to control the message to a certain extent, and it’s easy, right? And if we have all of these tools available for the members...
R: And it makes it easy for us to be more of an advocate if we're doing it on social media, because it doesn't take very long, and we're on social media anyways.
N+B: Exactly, yes
R: I think you'll find very few PAs who aren't already on social media
B: And speaking towards the toolkit that you have put together. Rachael and I haven't used the video, but we did meet with an MPP in Ontario and we did use the slide deck presentation and ultimately it was...I don't know if the MPP found that the slide deck was as helpful to him as our conversation but it certainly made us feel really comfortable.
R: It gave us the confidence.
B: It gave us the confidence and ability to go in and speak with him because without your support and that toolkit, we probably would not have reached out to him
N: I mean, that’s really refreshing to hear actually, because the one thing we do is try and we listen to our members. We try and put things together for our members to help them and for them to help us but it's really nice to hear the feedback as well, which we don't hear a lot. I mean we do hear from some members saying ‘That was great’, ‘Thank you’, ‘Appreciate it’, or ‘maybe we can use this’ or ‘maybe that wasn't so effective’ but really the feedback is important because ultimately I think we have the same objective here
R+B: Yes
N: We want to advance the PA profession across Canada, right? So we’re working towards the same thing
B: Absolutely
R: Yeah, exactly and so I think PAs really need to work with CAPA and make CAPA stronger and help us get where we need to be or we want to be
All: [LAUGHTER]
B: Okay, so off of that, how do you feel that, speaking of social media and advocacy, how do you feel that PAs have been perceived in the media 5 years ago compared to now and where do you see that going?
N: I think the conversation 5 years ago is ‘What is a PA, there's this new profession, this is a PA?’ Very basic, introducing a new health profession, there's a bit of buzz around this new health profession. Not really describing the roles effectively, but just basically giving a high level overview. Now what I'm seeing is that there's a clear understanding of what a PA is, I mean there's still lots of work to do in educating and raising awareness, but the more and more people that I talk to, they understand what a PA is. When you look at any of the media articles that are published, they’re much deeper and there's a focus on ‘okay, how are PAs helping, PAs are cost effective, where are they working’. So more in depth analysis. The next stage that we'd like to see is that ‘PAs are doing great work in this speciality, PAs are weighing in on this issue, PAs develop a new strategy for seniors care’. Right, like the next….It’s the natural evolution i would think as well. As the professions starts to grow
B: Right, it expands
N: And the bigger we get, we’ll have more of a voice
B: Yeah, I think that’s a big thing
R: And more influence on health policy
N: Definitely
B: Numbers make a difference. Can you speak to some member benefits that are available to people but seem to be underutilized or that people are unaware of?
N: Well, we have quite a few member benefits. I think that the most important ones are...liability insurance is huge. That's one of our most valuable member benefits. We’ve recently negotiated a rate, like in the last few years, it's actually the company we’re working with that's half the cost of what it was previous
B: Okay, wow
N: Yeah, and that’s full coverage for our members, it’s 10 million dollars per instant, tail end coverage, legal expenses, so it's full coverage. And I think what we’re really trying to do is communicate to our members how valuable it is to have liability insurance. Because some policies, some plans, cover a group of healthcare providers and if that policy is maxed out, what do you do to protect yourself, right? So it's really about PAs informing themself, how they’re covered, if they’re covered under liability insurance through their institution where they’re working. If not, they should consider really looking into liability insurance individually.
B: So off of that, speaking for myself, I tend to have a big concern about individual liability insurance and my concern comes from my origin in the states. It makes complete sense that you should have...if coverage is going to run out on the group plan, there's going to be a problem, right? So that makes complete sense to have more coverage. My concern ends up lying in the fact that everything done needs to be done in conjunction with the physician. But the lawyers don't care about that. So if I have a different plan than my supervising physician, we’re going to have different lawyers, and their job is to protect me and the other lawyer’s job is to only protect that physician. But in actuality, in practice, we need to act as a unit, right? We do not act individually. So if we are up against something, we should be on the same side. But if we have different lawyers, we're not on the same side, because the lawyers don't view us on the same side.
R: Yeah, they protect the individual
N: Right
B: So what do you say to that? What is your view on that? Is there a view on that, is there a concern of that in Canada?
N: Well, to be honest, I haven't heard that concern, yet. I think you do make a fair point. In terms of coverage, there just hasn't been enough incidents in Canada. Right now, I haven't heard of any incidents. I mean, there has been incidents in the past, but, in the last few years, I haven't heard of any incidents involving PAs. Ultimately, they report to the supervising physician, you’re right, you're working in conjunction with the physician, you should be on the same page but at the end of the day, I think you also need to...you should also be working in unison, the lawyers are obviously going to defend the individual. But, I think you also need to look at protecting yourself as well, right? It’s kind of...it's a balance, if you compare it to house insurance for example, or car insurance, you have to have, right? Because you’re putting yourself into a dangerous situation everyday when you get out there, you can hurt somebody, or you can hurt yourself. So you need to have it in some structure. And that doesn't necessarily...that only protects you, right, as an individual, right? I look at it that way. I think it's worth investigating, it's worth asking those questions of Marsh, is who we work with and they've been very committed to us and loyal. And actually we’ve just renegotiated another policy with them for another year with a fair, competitive rate. We were really happy about that because it’s actually a reduction than the rate that we had before
B: Wow
R: That’s awesome
N: We’re very happy about that. We’re always working towards our members and trying to offer you the best benefits, the most affordable benefits. We have lots of other benefits that people can take advantage of, like home and auto insurance, as well. I've heard some instances where PAs actually called the personal and got a much lower rate than with their employer.
B: Oh, wow
N: Just because it’s with a different plan with a not-for-profit organization. You always have to look and see what's available. A recent trip I took to Florida I was able to use the national car insurance and I saved myself 300 dollars. Not car insurance, sorry, car rentals
B: Car rentals, yes
N: It's things like that that may not seem like a big deal but we have a full page of member benefits and there's also PEPID, suites, application stuff you can use in your practice, tools, practice resources, discounts off practice resources. So it's worth going to the website under the member section and checking out what’s available.
R: Okay, great, absolutely
B: Yeah, and then for the insurance, you would have to contact the insurance company directly?
N: Yeah, they can always make calls with us and we can help facilitate that discussion, for sure, but for the full policy and details, it's important to speak directly to the broker
B: Of course, of course
R: Yeah, because it depends on your speciality, and x, y, and z. So what do you need from the CAPA members to make your job easier and make this advocacy overall more…
B: Effective
R: Effective!
N: I would say communication is the big thing for me. I think we need to have two way communication. So not just us throwing stuff at the members. I would really like for the members to pick up the phone. If they have an issue, call us. They need something. Even if we can't help, it's worth asking the question or maybe there's something we can do, right? I think that would make my job easier. And just knowing what would be useful.
B: What’s helpful, yeah.
R: Don't just semble about it behind the scenes, just say it. I'm terrible for that.
B+N: [LAUGHTER]
R: [INAUDIBLE]...I won't actually say anything, it's such a silly thing to do
N: I think it's human nature to be like that
R: Nothing’s going to change if you don't say anything
N: And there’s some people that do. There’s some people that call us whether good or bad, post stuff on social media, email us, and we always try to respond honestly, fairly. We try and do the best we can with our resources to provide what we can to our members. Things aren't perfect, we’re a small association, we do what we can, for sure. But, we definitely want to hear from our members.
R: What’s your favorite part about working at CAPA?
N: Mmmm
R: [LAUGHTER]
B: Travel?
N: I do like to travel, for sure, I really like our annual conferences. I think that’s my favourite time of the year is our conference every October. Although, it’s a lot of work
R: I was going to say, if you have a lot of work, that would be stressful
N: I think any of the other staff, if you asked them, would tell you the same thing. Although it's a lot of work, the actual conference itself is just so much fun. You get to see all the members, you get to see how far we've come as an association, as a profession. The calibre of the speakers that we have and the talks, I feel like every year it's getting better, like the content, the CPD.
B: Yes!
N: I think that we’re introducing new fun activities now like for galas. Like last year, the first time we had a gala, it was just so well received. At first, people weren't sure. Things like this, people coming and doing podcasts, our app, I don't know if you checked it out?
R: Yeah, it’s awesome!
B: Yeah, we have the app
N: I feel like we work towards that every year and then we start to introduce new fun stuff. A lot of the [INAUDIBLE] communication stuff I love, like the advocacy. Putting together the tools for the members, going out and doing the lobby day events, I really enjoy those. Because you get to see everybody come together for the same purpose and I really feel like it has an impact.
B: I think it does, I think it does. So, if anybody has any further questions or wants to get in contact with you, how…?
N: nstpierre@capa-acam.ca [LAUGHTER]
R: Perfect
B: Alrighty, wonderful. Thank you so much. We’ll write your email also in the description.
N: Perfect, perfect. Or you can find me on facebook, on the social media page.
B: Perfect, on social media. Are you on Linkedin as well?
N: Yes, actually, and you'll hear more about this tomorrow, or not tomorrow, Saturday. We just started a Linkedin group. So before, we were just on Facebook and Twitter, but now we’re going to put up a professional page, we have a CAPA page. It’s already ready to go, so we’ll post it in the conference
B: Wonderful. Okay, everybody, go on Linkedin and friend the CAPA page and if you're a PA not on Linkedin, you should really reconsider.
R: [LAUGHTER]
B: Alright, thank you so much for being here, Natalie, we appreciate it.
R: Thank you so much
B: Thank you!
~MUSIC OUTRO~
R: Meet the PAs podcast is sponsored by PAhelpers.ca where you can find all your Canadian exam prep needs. If you enjoyed this podcast, please visit us at MTPpodcast.com. Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe and we would love your feedback.
~MUSIC OUTRO CONTINUES~
Natalie St. Pierre is the Director, Communications and Stake Holder Relations for CAPA. This interview takes place during the CAPA 2017 conference in Ottawa. Natalie reviews the critical role of advocacy and the progress CAPA is making in Ontario, Quebec and BC with PA days and PA advocacy among politicians and the general public. Natalie and CAPA have prepared and advocacy toolkit for practicing PAs to help support individuals in contacting their local politicians and newspapers and contribute to the advocacy campaign. She also provides a brief overview of the recently released evidence by the Conference Board of Canada showing the benefit and impact of PAs in the healthcare system. Natalie discusses the buzz around the newly released PA video in both English and French. See the link below.
CAPA PA Video: https://vimeo.com/190732059
CAPA Member Benefits: https://capa-acam.ca/membership/membership-benefits/
Professional Liability Insurance with Marsh Canada: wctinsurance@willis.com
CAPA official twitter account: https://twitter.com/capaacam?lang=en
Natalie's email: nst-pierre@capa-acam.ca
Natalie's LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/natalie-st-pierre-69660b39