Grandma’s touch

She is the president and CEO of Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, a nurse by trade and at heart, a business woman and the go to person for many of her employees. But most importantly, Janice Kaffer is a grandma.

When it comes to running a business, least of all a hospital, one can imagine the work load is not easy. Kaffer’s work-model is the “give me a job, put me to work and I’ll get it done.”

According to her right-hand woman, Kaffer’s second family is the hospital.

“When I first applied for the job Jan told me, ‘At home, I have a husband. Here, you are my husband,’” said Danette Dutot, senior executive assistant to the CEO and governance coordinator of Hotel-Dieu Grace Healthcare. “Jan has a completely open door policy and she means that. I’ve seen housekeeping staff go into her office because they want to talk to her, as well as the thousands of other people in the hospital that can come in any time and talk.”

Dutot said the thing Kaffer possesses which says most about her is not her smarts, having numbers and statistics ready at any moment, or her resume which is ridden with a background in business, politics, community service and 31 years of nursing.

The thing she has that shows forth every day, and that makes her the best person to run the hospital, is that she is a grandma.

“There’s a lot of grandmas out there but she is a hands-on grandma, even in the work place,” said Dutot.

Kaffer is the type of grandma who will deal with anything and everything according to Dutot.

“I can come to her with something so tiny and she will never say, ‘I can’t deal with that,’” she said. “She’s so honest and so transparent. Nothing is beneath her.”

After the Heart Breaker Challenge obstacle course earlier this year where Kaffer challenged Gary Switzer, CEO of the Local Health Integration Network and “swept the floor,” after raising over $10,000 by herself. Afterwards, she put on her scrubs and for the first time in years and worked for a shift to help out the nurses who supported her in winning.

Dutot said she held true to it and did the worst of the work. When people came for administrative business, she put them on hold so she could finish her nurse work.

“Everyone in healthcare has that one moment, same goes for police force, medicinal doctors and any life-or-death job, where they know they are in the right place,” said Kaffer. “I’ve had a lot of good mentors, a lot of good teachers and what I do here I hope resonates and emulates through the wonderful staff we have.”

Kaffer said it’s not about the jobs she did and the things she’s gone up against, it’s about how she approached it and what she did to overcome obstacles. One such obstacle is how she has gotten to where she is today with a very odd and unlikely schooling career.

“I gravitated to the sciences and did very well in grade school and high school and thought I was going to go into medicine,” said Kaffer. “I didn’t do well in chemistry so than I knew I’ve always been a pretty good speaker, so I tried my hands at politics.”

Kaffer said she went into political science and French at York University and thought she was going to be the Prime Minister of Canada.

When Kaffer got into nursing it wasn’t her life-long dream or aspiration to be a nurse, rather, it was a little jealousy and a little bit of a ‘one-up’ attitude with her high school “arch-nemises.”

“I went to a fun fair at a public school and when I was there my arch-rival was there. A girl by the name of Ilene,” said Kaffer. “Ilene was standing there in her nursing student whites and all these people were talking to her. She was my arch-rival, ARCH-RIVAL, in high school. So I looked at my sisters and said if she can do it, I sure as well can.”

She applied the next day and got it. Kaffer was a registered nurse in 1984 after graduating from Centennial College.

When she stopped working for a few years and was at home with her two children, she decided to go back to school where she received her bachelor’s in business administration from Trent University and her master’s in public administration from Queen’s University.

“I started getting into management after that starting in homecare,” said Kaffer. “Afterwards, I went in to the hospital eventually moving my way up into senior positions both in healthcare and hospital sectors.”

Kaffer was “headhunted” into a vice president of chief nursing role for the Nova Scotia Health Authority before her current job to which again she was “headhunted.”

“When you move into leadership roles, it’s good to hold yourself accountable to mentors and teachers because you are in charge of lives, quite more so in healthcare,” said Kaffer. “I came into the office on day one nervous and scared. I came into the office day 366 and pretty much felt the same way.”

Her family is the most important aspect of her life and she said when she’s at home with her husband and kids and grandkids, she’s no longer Janice Kaffer, CEO. She’s “Gamma.”

“That grounds me, there’s a life outside of this office,” said Kaffer. “When you let things consume you, you don’t make good decisions.”

Kaffer said how she’s dealt with the stress and hardships are steps she’s lived her whole life by.

“One, I stay true to myself as a person. I was raised with a sense of values, I was raised with a sense of responsibility and I think that when you make big decisions that could affect people’s lives, you need to understand your own values,” said Kaffer. “Two, I don’t believe at any given moment that I have all the answers. As soon as you start doing that is when you begin to fail as a boss and as a person.”

Kaffer said one of the hardest parts of her job now is not being with patients anymore. She said this is something she’s had to work on and she still goes out and visits with patients whenever she can spare the time in her schedule.

“I think the easiest way to put my life and my job is to say I’ve overcome,” said Kaffer. “No matter what you do, overcome.”