Posted • Last updated
Categories: Patient Voice Mail, Working Together for Better Health Care
The Patient Voices Network’s mission is to “advance authentic patient engagement by building our partners’ capacity so person- and family-centred care becomes the foundation on which all health care decisions are made.” Part of enacting this mission is ensuring that patient voices are included in feedback opportunities. It’s key that changes made to our health care system are inclusive of patients – and that’s what the Patients as Partners Initiative strives to accomplish. The initiative included a few PVN patient partners in this important work.
The Patients as Partners Initiative was founded by the Ministry of Health on the principle of, “Nothing about me, without me” and an aim to ensure that voices of patients, family members and caregivers are incorporated at all levels of the health care system. From late 2017 to early 2018, it hosted a series of Regional Engagement Tables where patients, family caregivers as well as health care providers and administrative staff discussed and provided input on a variety of topics.
The event in Interior Health’s region sparked positive feedback from patient partners:
“Overall, I felt energized by the opportunity to talk and share ideas with such a diverse group of people who all really want the same thing.”
“I found the session very valuable, and I learned so much. We were introduced to services that I never knew existed and, as we discussed, many health care providers didn’t necessarily know about either.”
The initiative later hosted a one-day workshop to bring together voices from across the province to learn from each other and provide input on the five key themes which emerged from the regional engagement tables.
- Improving access to primary care
- Improving access for rural and remote patients and families
- Team-based care
- Cultural safety and humility
- Urgent and primary care centres
Next, a Community Conversation event was held in March 2019 in Vancouver and provided a summary of the findings from the six regional sessions. The purpose of the event was to receive input on the provincial Digital Health Strategy; this included patient portals, which are online tools that allow patients to book appointments, communicate with their health care providers and access their health information.
The event also aimed to build patient empowerment and identify challenges and strategies for enhancing community engagement and person- and family-centred care. Reports were shared with ministry and health authority leaders and staff for use in policy development and strategic planning. A suite of provincial policies on virtual care is currently in the final stages of development.
When checking back in with the Ministry of Health in 2021, they shared that there have been numerous improvements that were either sparked or reinforced by the outcomes of these consultations. Some examples include:
- Improved communication of free self-management resources through the development of an online calendar on the Patients as Partners website
- Enhanced chronic disease self-management resources and methodology for community development with multicultural populations
- Increased reach/work on integrating traditional healing through work with the iCON (interCultural Online Health Network)
- Pain BC developed a new self-management program with topics of interest and an approach for people who are less likely to join mainstream self-management programming. Pain BC also worked with Elders to further modify the content to ensure that the materials are culturally appropriate for Indigenous people with chronic pain.
- In the Community Conversation report, social isolation was raised as an issue. This was of particular concern to the Patients as Partners team due to COVID-19. To address this, funded partner organizations made extra efforts to reach out to their communities and provided information on how people can continue to access services as well as providing additional resources that could help people enhance their online skills. For example, Pain BC sent out cards via mail to patients on how to access services.
Summaries of the regional sessions can be found here:
