Month: March 2019

As Director of Nursing at Homewood Ravensview, I have the unique opportunity to build my nursing team from the ground up. I am lucky to be able to form a team around the vision and values of a health care company with over 135 years of experience in the field of mental health and addictions. My leadership philosophy is built on the foundations of servant leadership and appreciative inquiry. As a servant leader, I strongly believe that my role as nurse leader is to serve and support the people I supervise. Our nursing team will only be strong if they have everything they need for success and it is my job to ensure those tools are provided. Additionally, as an appreciative inquiry practitioner, I subscribe to the belief that everyone has strengths and abilities that can be nurtured to grow. Additionally, I subscribe to the belief that ‘words create worlds’. As such, I am careful to use positive language and work to find the good in every situation. Highly effective teams use six times more positive language than negative.

Before coming to Homewood Ravensview, I managed an Assertive Community Treatment Team. My clientele were the most disenfranchised patients in the Victoria area. Most had severe addictions, severe and persistent mental health issues, homelessness and criminality. Although my team worked diligently to help this patient population, there were many barriers to success and hope was often low. That’s one of the reasons I am enthusiastically working with Homewood Ravensview. I look forward to seeing the other side of recovery and working with patients who are eagerly pursuing self-betterment.

I am excited to work with an excellent team of leaders, Robert De Clark, GM; Lyn MacBeath, Medical Director; and Michael Berry, Clinical Director. We look forward to opening our doors to welcome our first cohort of patients in late May. We will be working with a variety of patients with substance use issues, trauma, process addictions, anxiety, and depression, as well as many other co-morbid mental health conditions. We will grow and learn along with our patients with the excellent support of the Homewood family.

Alexis Winter, BA, RPN, MPN (c)