Dr. Kazimirski is an exceptional executive physician leader and a long-standing member of the CSPE. She excels in all three areas evaluated for the 2008 CSPE Excellence in Medical Leadership Award.

Leadership in a hospital or health region management role

Dr. Kazimirski’s contribution has spanned several decades of sustained commitment to hospital, regional and provincial health care organizations.

Until 2007, in her capacity as vicepresident of medicine for Capital District Health Authority (CDHA) in Halifax, Dr. Kazimirski was a structural and cultural change agent, who contributed significantly to the development of a patient-centred care environment in Nova Scotia. She was instrumental in creating a strategic framework for primary health care and developed leadership capacity to move forward on a primary health care reform agenda. She created an innovative district-wide Department of Family Practice supported by a community council and led in the development of a framework for chronic disease management in CDHA.

Earlier, Dr. Kazimirski served as senior medical director for the Central Regional Health Board of Nova Scotia and as chief of obstetrics, president medical staff, then board representative at the Hants Community Hospital, Windsor, Nova Scotia.

Leveraging her wealth of experience and expertise, Dr. Kazimirski has recently started a health systems consulting practice aimed at applying her health leadership insights to enhancing Canadian health care organizations. She is also currently a surveyor for the Canadian Council on Health Services Accreditation.

Commitment to enhancing the role of physicians in the management of health care delivery organizations

During her tenure at the CDHA, Dr. Kazimirski developed the medical infrastructure to support the amalgamation of 8 institutions and the academic health sciences centre and moved to one framework of medical staff bylaws, discipline processes, rules and regulations and affiliation agreements. She was successful in creating a district-wide culture that understands the new models of governance of the medical community.

Dr. Kazimirski’s responsibilities included working with the Medical Society of Nova Scotia and the province’s Department of Health to develop academic alternative funding plans (AFPs) and she successfully negotiated on behalf of the Departments of Surgery, Anesthesia, Family Practice, ENT, Neurosurgery, Pathology, Psychiatry, and Medicine. A framework for negotiating AFPs was created during this process.

She also developed a comprehensive physician resource plan for the entire district with full impact analysis of all physician positions and alignment with the business plans of the district health authority. Her office also dealt with all of the contractual frameworks for the physician community and administered a budget of over $20 million.

Dr. Kazimirski created and initiated implementation of a strategic plan to engage the over-700 medical staff in the district.

But perhaps, most important of all, she consistently led by example, demonstrating how physicians can be successfully engaged within the system. She has been very generous with her time and energy to the generation of leaders following in her footsteps, mentoring many physicians who are in positions of medical leadership today.

Significant contribution to leadership development within CSPE, CMA or one of its divisions or affiliated societies

While serving in elected positions in medical associations — president of the Medical Society of Nova Scotia (1985), CMA board member (1986–1989), chair (1989–1993) and president (1996–1997) — Dr. Kazimirski continually emphasized the importance of physician leadership development. She worked tirelessly to create greater opportunities to train physician leaders and for greater support and recognition of the work physician leaders do. She was directly responsible for the success of the CMA Leadership Workshop for Medical Women, an innovative development experience initiated in the 1990s to increase the number of women physicians in leadership positions.

Her long commitment to physician leadership development is exemplified through numerous ongoing activities. For example, for the last few years, Dr. Kazimirski has served her peers on the CSPE executive and is an influential member of the Advisory Board for the Centre for Health Leadership and Research at Royal Roads University University as well as of the Board of Directors for the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. She recently played a key leadership role at the Advisory Committee for the Canadian Health Services Research Foundation’s innovative Executive Training for Research Application (EXTRA) Fellowship program.