Christine Donaldson: Moving the Needle on Sustainable Procurement

Advocating for change and collaboration in our healthcare supply chain is part of Christine Donaldson's purpose, this shines through in her leadership approach. Her team's advocacy work is reflected with action as HealthPRO Canada recently became an Aboriginal Procurement Champion with the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB), thus making strides towards a more inclusive healthcare supply chain and system. "Part of our Indigenous journey and reconciliation of where we're heading into the future is to do it through business partnerships," says Christine when explaining the importance of collaborating with CCAB. Christine also shares her leadership approach centred around collaboration, transparency, openness, and meeting people at the level they're at. And collaboration is a big part of the work Christine and her team are doing on moving toward a more sustainable procurement model. Don't miss our special 70th episode of Healthcare Change Makers! It's a great chance to hear from Christine about how HealthPRO is focusing on sustainable practices, their strategies to ensure constant supply for its hospital members, and Christine's advice to healthcare organizations on implementing a collaborative culture! Quotables: "Sustainable products have always been an interest of mine, how do we really take the weight of the system, be more climate friendly, look at greening our healthcare environment, it's always fascinating to me from back to my clinical days." - CD "My professional clinical background has been unbelievably important in how I've taken different leadership roles in my career." - CD "In the end, we look different on the outside but we're really the same and that's really that spirit of getting at the ground floor, really getting to know each other goes a long way towards that healthy new world we're building for the future." - CD "I want all Canadian patients to have the same access, the best products, the highest quality, and how can we make that happen? Some of that is organic and getting the right people together." - CD "The legacy of any issues or mistakes is you move forward, and you create the stronger and better systems moving forward." - CD "In your career you want to have a purpose for the greater good of the system or greater good of what you do, and I think what drives us is we have an important role in the whole machinery of how things operate." - CD "We're using procurement as a gateway to create some better practices." - CD "Too often we start off with contributing challenges, problems, and issues, I like to flip it on its head and say let's talk about some of the positive first and get to a place of where we can really understand each other." - CD "You learn as much from the person you're mentoring as much as they learn from you, it's a two-way street and it's part of that very healthy way of challenging each other and dialoguing." - CD Mentioned in this Episode: HealthPRO Canada U of T Pharmacy Dr. Fiona Miller Dr. Zubin Austin Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business (CCAB) Access More Interviews with Healthcare Leaders at HIROC.com/podcast Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X, and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your favourite podcasts. Email us at [email protected].