Nada Khan

Background

About Nada Khan

The turning point in my journey to helping people with mental health issues began during a summer student job at the Griffin Centre (Mental Health Services). By witnessing and becoming aware of individuals with multiple barriers, especially communication barriers, it became my mission to make sure these individuals’ voices be heard in the community, and by their healthcare providers, and be treated with the compassion, respect and humanity that they deserve. Over the years, I have realized that complex cases require complex care and I have developed my philosophy “if this was my loved one, what is the quality of care I would want for them?” Early in my career I was involved with the care of a non-verbal client who was demonstrating “problematic behaviours” such as physical aggression and self-harm. Following the insistence of the consulting psychiatrist to have a full dental checkup, revealing multiple problems which were dealt with, the client’s behaviour improved, negating the necessity for additional medications. Since then, my mantra and my practice is to always investigate, investigate, and investigate, as this provides the medical professionals the pertinent information that informs their decisions on treatment. I have also learned to integrate the input of community care providers towards developing a unified treatment plan. I believe that to show respect and compassion to a person experiencing physical and mental health challenges, you have to spend time trying to figure out all the possible sources of their behaviour. I have learned that it’s a necessity to think 3-dimensionally using a bio-psycho-social model of understanding a person’s situation. Core Competencies: Client Advocacy; Improving Quality of Care; Staff Mentorship and Coaching; Care Coordination; Collaboration & Positive Relationship-Building with Relevant Stakeholders; Liaison between various Health Professionals.