Patricia Adachi is grateful to live so close to The Scarborough Hospital's General campus.

The 92-year-old moved into a retirement community around the corner from the hospital in December 2012. Having spent most of her life living in the west end of Toronto, Patricia had not yet become a patient of any health care provider in Scarborough. 

However, on February 14, 2013, she became "violently ill" from medication she was taking to control pain and swelling in her left arm and hand and visited the General campus Emergency Department (ED) for the first time.

Best practices research shows that healthy providers working in healthy work environments deliver better healthcare to their patients. Over the years, The Scarborough Hospital (TSH) has launched a number of employee wellness programs designed to contribute to that healthy provider/healthy workplace goal, including smoking cessation programs, on-site fitness facilities and various healthy eating programs. This week, TSH expanded that list with the opening of Exhale - two new wellness centres designed to encourage employees to nurture and care for their own personal well-being.  

"Keeping our staff healthy, happy and safe is a priority at TSH," says Karen Dobbie, Director of Human Resources at TSH. "We are committed to supporting our staff in all areas of their professional and personal growth to ensure a strong team that works together and is able to provide outstanding care to our global community." 

The centres were created as part of an overall rejuvenation of the TSH wellness program "Balance - Make Health Happen," and were established in the quiet space of the hospital's Health Information and Resource Centres. They are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and provide a quiet space outside of busy work areas for employees to relax and refresh during breaks.

In addition to positively impacting quality of care, employee wellness programs have also been shown to reduce organizational costs by reducing absenteeism and employee turnover. A recent study published in the journal Health Affairs showed that every dollar spent on wellness programs resulted in a savings of $2.73 in absenteeism costs and more than $3 in medical costs.    

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Most people would not get excited over a photo of the rash associated with Lyme disease. But if you're a user of Dr. Josh Landy's mobile phone application, Figure 1, these sorts of images of painful, fatal and unique conditions are exactly why you signed up. 

Figure 1 is a new photo-sharing network designed for healthcare professionals. Dr. Landy, an intensive care physician at The Scarborough Hospital, co-founded the app with Ryerson Communications Professor Greg Levey and computer programmer Richard Penner. 

Dr. Landy cites the "culture of physicians to share interesting findings, whether they're classic ones we learn in medical school but rarely see, or picture-textbook-perfect versions of things we see day-to-day," as the inspiration for Figure 1. The idea is to take items already being passed around via email or text message and make them available to the medical community to encourage people to learn more about the conditions.